Forum Discussion
Faster Way to Send Customized Paginated Reports as Excel with RLS for ~50 Users
Hi Community,
I need to send customized paginated reports as Excel (filename containing the Manager’s name) using Row-Level Security to about 45–50 Regional Managers on a recurring basis.
I’ve successfully automated this using Microsoft’s guide "Save a Power BI paginated report to a local folder with Power Automate", but performance is a major concern — it took around 3 hours to complete for just 45 recipients.
Current Setup:
Power Automate Premium Trial
Power BI PPU license
Reports are RLS-enabled, so each user gets their own filtered copy.
What I’ve Tried / Observed:
AWS Lambda + Power BI REST API to export per user.
Limited by Lambda’s 15-min max runtime.
Current REST API throttling allows 1 successful request every ~5 minutes, meaning only 3 reports per Lambda run.
At this rate, we’d need ~220 minutes for 45 reports.
Could run via AWS Fargate for longer, then terminate instances daily.
Manual Export from Power BI Service / Report Builder.
Works fine for single exports but not scalable or automated.
Power Automate “Export to File for Paginated Reports” → Create File (to OneDrive).
Works but still runs sequentially, causing slow completion (~3 hours).
Power Automate “Export to File for Paginated Reports” → Send an Email (V2).
Results in throttling and HTTP 429 errors when sending multiple RLS versions.
Dynamic Data Subscription to export to a folder then send via SendGrid.
Requires Premium Per Capacity license, which we don’t have.
Question:
Is there a faster or more efficient way to send multiple RLS-filtered paginated reports in parallel or batch, without Premium Per Capacity?
Any best practices, architectural adjustments, or workarounds to avoid throttling and cut down runtime would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Thanks v-ssriganesh,really appreciate your input!
On the suggestion to chunk recipients and run parallel Power Automate flows:
We actually explored this, but it quickly became more overhead than value. These are lightweight paginated reports, filtered per Regional Manager using RLS, and they render quickly in the Power BI Service, running multiple parallel flows still hits throttling.Key limitation (per Microsoft doc):
“Only one export job per report is allowed at a time per workspace per user.”So:
Running parallel flows from the same workspace/service principal still triggers throttling.
Staggering start times doesn’t reliably avoid it.
Using multiple service principals or duplicating workspaces just to work around throttling feels overly complex for what we’re trying to do — sending 45 filtered reports weekly.
I'm hoping for a simpler, scalable approach that doesn’t require Premium Capacity or multi-principal orchestration, and can bring the total runtime below an hour.
7 Replies
- GilbertQ
Super User
The only alternative that I can come up with is using a 3rd party tool called Power BI Robots by Devscope. Which will allow you to do what you want and will send it significantly faster. You do have to pay for it, but it does have a trial version that you can use.
v-ssriganeshCommunity Support
Hello SlicerSamurai,
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum and Thanks GilbertQ for sharing your valuable insights.As mentioned, third-party tools like Power BI Robots can indeed help automate and speed up delivery of personalized paginated reports. However, since they are outside of Microsoft’s ecosystem, you’d want to review their security, compliance, and licensing before adopting them.
If you prefer to stay within the Microsoft stack, the main ways to reduce processing time on PPU are:
- Chunking recipients into smaller groups and running parallel Power Automate flows.
- Optimizing report rendering to reduce per-export processing time.
For reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/export-paginated-report#throttling
Best Regards,
Ganesh singamshetty.Thanks v-ssriganesh,really appreciate your input!
On the suggestion to chunk recipients and run parallel Power Automate flows:
We actually explored this, but it quickly became more overhead than value. These are lightweight paginated reports, filtered per Regional Manager using RLS, and they render quickly in the Power BI Service, running multiple parallel flows still hits throttling.Key limitation (per Microsoft doc):
“Only one export job per report is allowed at a time per workspace per user.”So:
Running parallel flows from the same workspace/service principal still triggers throttling.
Staggering start times doesn’t reliably avoid it.
Using multiple service principals or duplicating workspaces just to work around throttling feels overly complex for what we’re trying to do — sending 45 filtered reports weekly.
I'm hoping for a simpler, scalable approach that doesn’t require Premium Capacity or multi-principal orchestration, and can bring the total runtime below an hour.
- v-ssriganesh
Hello SlicerSamurai,
Thanks for the detailed follow-up. it’s very helpful to understand that you’ve already tested parallel flows and confirmed the throttling impact.You are correct that the limitation: "Only one export job per report is allowed at a time per workspace per user" is enforced at the capacity level for PPU workspaces. This means that regardless of how many flows or service principals you use within the same PPU capacity, exports will queue and execute sequentially.
Unfortunately, on PPU there is no supported way to fully eliminate this throttling for a single report in a single workspace. The options that would meet your target runtime of under an hour are:
- Premium Per Capacity enables Dynamic Data Subscriptions which can deliver all personalized versions in parallel directly from the Power BI Service.
- Third-party orchestration tools can sometimes optimize delivery pipelines, though you’d still need to validate performance against throttling limits.
For now, with PPU and the current throttling rules, the runtime you’re seeing is in line with the product’s behaviour.
Best Regards,
Ganesh singamshetty.
- v-ssriganesh
Hello SlicerSamurai,
Hope everything’s going great with you. Just checking in has the issue been resolved or are you still running into problems? Sharing an update can really help others facing the same thing.
Thank you.
- v-ssriganesh
Hello SlicerSamurai,
We hope you're doing well. Could you please confirm whether your issue has been resolved or if you're still facing challenges? Your update will be valuable to the community and may assist others with similar concerns.
Thank you.
- v-ssriganesh
Hello SlicerSamurai,
Could you please confirm if your query has been resolved by the provided solutions? This would be helpful for other members who may encounter similar issues.
Thank you for being part of the Microsoft Fabric Community.
