Displaying Power BI Web Reports As SlideShow

[sieed]

I am trying to display the variaous visualizations in my report as a  slideshow. I am planning to use Chrome's Auto Tab to rotate each tab in a specified interval. So, I will put each visual in it's own tab. 

My question is, if power bi refreshes the data while chrome auto tab is running, do the graphs get updated or do I need another plugin to refresh the tabs? Has anyone tried this ? 

[DMiradakis]

Hey everyone,

It's me, Daniel, and I'm back again, but this time with some exciting news! 😁

Call me crazy, but I have made a landing page for a new product that I'm building to handle the same pain points that everyone has had in this ticket since 2017, and I am still seeing people say they need these problems solved!

I've got a new product called Displagent to do just this, whose landing page you can find here: https://www.displagent.io

Would you mind checking it out and submitting your email down in the newsletter box at the bottom? I'm gathering a list of early users to launch this product to, and I'd really love to hear your thoughts in detail, one on one!

I would really love to see this take off! 😁

Thank you!

-Daniel

[DMiradakis]

Hi everyone,

This is Daniel, the individual who had a lengthy amount of replies on this thread where I shared my GitHub repository with a revised Chrome extension: https://github.com/DMiradakis/Power-BI-Real-Time-Slideshow

(My first Power BI community account got deleted. Also shoutout to @_picoloto43 for INSPIRING ME TO LEARN JAVASCRIPT AND HTML, whoever you are, thank you for inspiring my journey.)

If you're reading this and you're still interested in getting this functionality, can I ask you a small question? Can you navigate to this link in my GitHub repository and comment on the discussion thread I've opened?

I still really love the Chrome extension, but my version has been broken for quite a while, and I'm seriously considering rebuilding the entire thing from the ground up as a SaaS product. The Chrome extension is ultimately a Javascript/DOM/HTML hack, and it breaks every time the Power BI team updates the HTML code in the Power BI Service. My new vision is something extremely reliable that uses the Power BI REST APIs.

Your participation would be greatly appreciated. 😊

Thanks!

-Daniel

[shorkeyr]

Is there anything else that needs to be downloaded for the extension to work? I can't get it working.

[Anonymous]

@shorkeyr 

No, that's the only thing that should be required! Would you mind navigating to my Github page and describing your issue in more detail there by opening up a new issue?

Just a few other issues that I've answered for other people as a quick reference:

• This will not work currently for the Power BI "New Look".
• This will not work in Power BI Server.

Thank you!

[AGo]

Hello,

I was presenting my report with Canary automatically opening at startup on my tv, your Chrome extension worked like a charm for months and started automatically, now it automatically activates correctly only eg. one time on five. I deactivated the "new look", is there a solution? Maybe the extension loads now with a delay and after the report page is loaded for some reason? Not working also on Chrome.
Thanks @Anonymous 

[Anonymous]

@AGo ,

Thanks for commenting! I actually wasn't familiar with Canary until I saw your post from earlier this morning!

In regards to your problem, I'm not entirely sure what could be causing that at the moment. I know that the extension writes and read variables from Chrome.Storage - and it's the synchronous storage option, if that's useful - so when you say that reports start on their own, I'm thinking that the extension is retrieving variables that have been retained from a previous use (for the same report and the same Workspace), and that's what's allowing it to start automatically. Otherwise, for a newly navigated-to report, you have to manually start it with the Play button.

Assuming my above hypothesis is correct, then I'm guessing it's going into a loop like it was with me a few days ago, and - for whatever reason - the loop only occasionally ends and the extension successfully activates.

I've had several other users over the past few weeks comment on GitHub issues in my repository stating that the extension is not working with the "Old Mode" user interface (I haven't added code to make it work with the "New Look" user interface still).

I'm glad to report, however, that as of less than a week ago, I published a new release of the extension: v2.2.1.

If you haven't done so already, please remove your previous version of the extension from Canary and Chrome and download this new version. I had to change the javsacript code because the Power BI Team has changed some of their underlying HTML code on Power BI Report pages.

If this doesn't solve your issue, please open up an issue in my repository or respond on here!

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Daniel

[Anonymous]

Great news everyone!

For anyone that is still wondering, yes, I am still updating and maintaining this extension.

You can still visit my GitHub repository and get the latest release, but I have some great news: I have decided to publish this extension to the Chrome Web Store. 😃

By doing this, it will be much easier for you to install the extension on your Chrome browser, and by installing it through the Chrome Web Store, any new updates that I publish will be automatically pushed to you.

[Anonymous]

Also, if, when you use the extension from the Chrome store, you could rate it, I would be most appreciative! 😄

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Daniel

[Anonymous]

@sss0379 , @benjaminhoang , @mohit0202 @henriquehoff 

I have taken @_picoloto43 's Google Chrome Extension and modified it to programatically refresh the report upon each page cycle. That way, if you are utilizing Direct Query in a Power BI Report such as myself, your associated report visuals will now update WITH the data that is being updated in the background.

I have uploaded the modified version on GitHub and forked it from @_picoloto43 's repository.

URL:

https://github.com/DMiradakis/Power-BI-Real-Time-Slideshow

I hope this helps everyone out! I have not added a play/pause button like others have requested, but feel free to build off of the code!

Many thanks to @_picoloto43 for a great base project!

Best Regards, 

Daniel

[Anonymous]

Hi DMiradakis, thanks for sharing such useful file and info.. It works fine, schedule is refreshing and dashboards are updating accordingly in full screen and rotating. The issue that I am having is that when I Press esc and close the PBI ones I open it again, it’s automatically starting, there is no stop function. Is something that I am missing ?!  

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous 

Well, your curiosity towards my project motivated me to push myself this past weekend and discover how to fix the bug. As it turns out, the solution was really quite simple. My issue was that I previously had no experience in handling asynschronous functions. All of my programming experience was limited to procedural programming, where the code (for the most part) fires in the order you write it in. NOT so with some of these Javascript libraries.

Anyways, now the extension will not fire until you actually click the little Power BI icon in the upper right-hand corner. I plan to return to it again soon and add more options for users to work with, such as halting the extension after it has been started.

I have already pushed a new commit to the Github repository's Master Branch:

https://github.com/DMiradakis/Power-BI-Real-Time-Slideshow

Thanks for the challenge! 😉 Now that I understand asynchronous function calling and callback functions, I am very excited to see what else I can accomplish via Javascript code.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous  and anyone else who is interested:

I have worked very hard the past week or so and have been teaching myself HTML, Javascript, and CSS. I have completely overhauled the entire extension, and have turned it from a one-click, non-stop extension to a fully operational popup with:

• Play button
• Pause/Stop button
• All timing options

This will be tremendously better than the current version of the extension. I am about to commit it to my Github page (see above links) very soon. I'll post here again when I update it.

Best Regards,

Daniel

[Anonymous]

To all who are concerned, I have finally finished overhauling the Chrome Extension. I have redesigned the extension into a fully functional popup with a play/pause buttons as well as drop downs to separate the refresh time and slide time intervals!

It's really cool! 🙂 Check it out on my Github:

https://github.com/DMiradakis/Power-BI-Real-Time-Slideshow

Best Regards,

Daniel

[gfo]

@Anonymous thanks for this awesome extension. One question.

Please how do you select which power bi reports to play in the slideshow?

[Anonymous]

@gfo 

To answer your question:

1. Navigate to a Power BI Report in the Power BI Service and actually open a report.
2. Upon opening a report in the Power BI Service, the small popup in the upper right-hand corner will become enabled where you can start the slideshow.

However, I have an additional suggestion for you: navigate to the Release tab on my GitHub repository and download Pre-Release v2.0.0-alpha .

I highly recommend you do this. Why?

1. I completely reformatted the popup with GitHub's own primer.css, so it looks x100 more presentable.
2. I fixed a bug where clicking the Play/Stop button would close the popup but not affect the slideshow.
3. This release now supports... (drum roll please): IMPORT MODE POWER BI REPORTS. Yes, that's right. Both Import-Mode and Direct Query/Live Connection reports are now supported in this extension.

Essentially, in building this extension, I taught myself:

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• jQuery
• Chrome's API
• Asynchronous programming
• MutationSummary
• jQuery-Mutation-Summary

The extension is now capable of some incredible feats, such as:

• Detecting your connectivity mode.
• Pressing the appropriate refresh button for your respective connectivity mode (if you didn't know, different connectivity modes require different refresh buttons to be pressed in the Power BI Service's user interface).
• Determinging when you navigate to a different report or a different workspace (even if the same report exists in two or more workspaces, it is still able to tell the difference).

You are probably aware that there is a refresh limit for Pro users and Premium users both in Power BI. However, there is no refresh limit for refreshes that are initialized inside the Power BI Service's user interface (😉). So if you know some JQuery and use those two Mutation repositories I linked above, you can change the webpage's DOM and listen for those changes and then respond to them. It is quite advanced but totally awesome to pull off. The result is Pre-Release v2.0.0-alpha.

Check it out.

-Daniel

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous 

Amazing work and support.. Thanks a lot for your time and dedication 

Question - We are now using PBI Server, but it the function is not working anymore, any suggestions please ?  

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Would you kindly mind navigating to this page and opening up an issue in my GitHub repository? If you don't have a GitHub account, it's free, and if you don't want to make one, I can try and respond on here - the only issue is, it's much harder for me to see notifications here on the Power BI Community website and much easier for me to see notifications from GitHub!

As to your question that you asked in your post, I apologize ahead of time, as I'm not quite understanding what is going wrong with the extension. If you can provide me with a bit more clarity by opening up a GitHub issue, then I can assist you better in finding out if I have any bugs with the extension! I know you mentioned Power BI Server, but I'm not quite following you!

Thank you, and thanks so much for the encouragement. 😊 Seeing posts on here from users such as yourself really motivates me to to stay active in the open source community and push myself to learn new things... your feedback is most appreciated!

I look forward to hearing more from you!

By the way: if you don't have a GitHub account already and make one to create an issue in my repository as mentioned above, please make sure to click the Watching button on my repository's home page! Also please make sure to setup your notifications on your GitHub account! The reason I suggest that is because I've had several people post issues in the repository, but it seems that most of the time, whenever I respond to them, they don't respond back; I'm beginning to wonder if maybe they just don't see my responses.

Best Regards,

Daniel

[RoseAmS]

Hi @Anonymous !!

First of all, I really want to thank you for your hardwork, dedication and kindness to share this awesome solution!

I tried to use your latest GitHub release, but it seems not working for Power BI's Service New Look (neither refresh nor slideshow)

Do you know any workaround for this issue?

Thanks!!

[Anonymous]

Hi @RoseAmS 

Would you kindly mind going to my GitHub repository and opening up this issue there? That way, I can easily track it!

In the mean time, let me take a look and see if I can reproduce your error on my end. And thank you very much for the kind encouragement. 😊

Thanks!

Best Regards,

Daniel

[RoseAmS]

Hi @Anonymous !

Just opened the issue on your GitHub

Thanks for your help!!

Hope you and your family are well !