Forum Discussion
How to export embedded images (base64) to PDF/PNG
Super UserI can't have these files hosted in any sort of public URL, and I can't get PBI and Sharepoint to understand each other.
You are not missing anything, and did a very thorough investigation - This is your catch-22. It would only work if you would make the folder with the images in your sharepoint public, which you really, really shouldn't do.
How many images are there? Can you embed them all as image visuals , stack them on top of each other, and then play with the transparency?
Aww, that's what I was afraid of. And even if I wanted to create a public sharepoint folder, I don't even have access to do so - not to mention I'm dealing with people's personal information, which is protected by law.
Regarding your question, the number of images is not that big - we're talking about 5 or 6. However, it would be very difficult to have all individual images embedded as visuals because the turn over on this team is quite high, so we would need to constantly change the PBIX file by adding/removing visuals. The idea behind this initiative was to automate 100% of this activity.
Wondering if there is any other way to handle this... Why doesn't the embedded base64 data work? Any idea?
So, I've tried to manually load every picture as an "image" layer, so I could try to do what you suggested - stacking them on top of each other and playing with transparency. This wouldn't solve my problem completely, but I could buy some time and get the report working while I try to figure out something else to do.
However, here's the catch: Image layers don't have a "transparency" setting. I couldn't figure out a way to programatically set alpha to 100% or to switch layer order - which means that I would have to manually hide/show the image I want before sending the e-mail.
The only alternative I could think about at this point would be to publish several PBIX reports, one with each associate's static picture, and use a PowerAutomate flow to define which report will be sent by e-mail every week. This sounds like a very "dirty" solution, not to mention it's innefficient (as now I would need to have about a dozen different reports to be maintained / competing for CPU resources when refreshing data).
Would this be the only way to go?
- lbendlin
What's the point of the image again? To remind each person how they once looked like?
Hahaha something like this.
So this is a communication e-mail layout we've been using for a while now, but we kind of manually write it every week - which means we gather information which is available across multiple systems (including the picture) and send it as a newsletter to a broader audience. This way people can easily see who is the person on charge for the week, so even if you don't know me by name, you can see my picture and figure out who am I just by looking around the office.
Anyway, my job is to automate this task, so I thought PBI would be the best way to do it since it can fetch data from multiple sources and it allows me to format the contents the way I want. I'm actually surprised that I can't find any way to dynamically handle images though, maybe I should be using a different tool?
