Dynamically Fetch and Display Documents in Power BI

[smalltownbear]

I have a business requirement to give the user the ability view a document by clicking a button inside of a report. Basically, there will be a table visual. Each row of the table visual will have a column containing a button. When the button is clicked by the user, the following will need to occur dynamically:

1. Execute an HTTP GET request against a URL stored in a field in the model 

2. Receive the HTTP response and extract a binary PDF payload from the body of the request

3. Render the PDF either inside the Power BI report itself, or by opening another program to display it (Adobe, Microsoft Edge, etc.)

Based on the research I've done so far, it doesn't look this is possible, but I thought I'd check in with the experts to confirm. Thanks.

[v-priyankata]

Hi @smalltownbear 

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

@GeraldGEmerick Thanks for the inputs.

I hope the information provided by user was helpful. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the community.

[v-priyankata]

Hi @smalltownbear 

Hope everything’s going smoothly on your end. I wanted to check if the issue got sorted. if you have any other issues please reach community.

[smalltownbear · Accepted solution]

Hi v-priyankata. I think the answer to my original question is that there's not really a way to accomplish what I am trying to do natively within Power BI. Perhaps a Power App application or a PowerAutomate flow can be integrated to accomplish the task, but that's not an option that is open to me at the present time.

[GeraldGEmerick]

@smalltownbear If you include the links to the PDF in the data table, you can set that column to be a URL. That then allows you to include the column in a Table visual as a small "link" icon. Add hyperlinks (URLs) to a table or matrix - Power BI | Microsoft Learn. If you need it to be dynamic, you could create a measure to do the same. This will then link out to the PDF file and open it in whatever default program the user's system uses for viewing PDFs.

[smalltownbear]

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, the only way to access the document is through a secured endpoint so I don't think just a bare URL link would do the trick as I would need some way of putting the access token in the header before making the call.

[GeraldGEmerick]

@smalltownbear Then I would look at building a Power App or Power Automate flow which you could then invoke using the Power App or Power Automate visual.