Forum Discussion
Publish to Web
I have a report which has a Power Automate button which works fine from the desktop version, however when pubished the functionaity disappears. We utilise the report withn a public facing portal and I am looking for a way to enable this feature for those who access the report to trigger the PA flow - Is there anyway the public report can be enabled to emulate this behaviour
Hello swhistance,
Thank you for the clarification the key point here is that the behavior you’re seeing is expected.
Reports shared using Publish to Web run in an anonymous context, so features that require user identity (like triggering flows from the Microsoft Power Automate visual) are not supported. That’s why the button works in Desktop but disappears after publishing.
Regarding the licensing concern: external users do not need individual licenses if you use capacity-based embedding.
With Microsoft Power BI Embedded or Premium capacity, licensing is applied at the capacity level, which is specifically designed for scenarios like portals with thousands of users. Your portal can authenticate users (including MFA) while the reports run on the dedicated capacity, so viewers don’t require Power BI licenses. Typically, only report authors need Pro/PPU to publish the content.
So in practice:
Publish to Web → anonymous access, but Power Automate visual will not work.
Power BI Embedded / Premium capacity → supports authenticated users and allows the functionality you’re trying to enable without licensing every viewer.
This is the common approach used for large external reporting portals.
7 Replies
- Olufemi7
Super User
Hello swhistance,
Power Automate buttons don’t work in Publish to Web reports because viewers are anonymous; to enable similar functionality, use secure embedding / Power BI Embedded or an HTTP-triggered flow from your portal.
See Microsoft Docs: Publish to Web, Power Automate visual.The report is currently available through our hosted Reporting web platform (requires MFA sign on). The issue with the embedded feature is the need then for external consumers to have PowerBI licensing, the only way to enable views was to Publish to Web. We are likely to have several 1000 users of these reports, financially this does not make sense (The PA functionality is limited to a small subset of users). Trying to understand the PBI licensing better as provisioning this sort of licence volume for casual consumers (in the main) does not make sense!
- Olufemi7
Hello swhistance,
Thank you for the clarification the key point here is that the behavior you’re seeing is expected.
Reports shared using Publish to Web run in an anonymous context, so features that require user identity (like triggering flows from the Microsoft Power Automate visual) are not supported. That’s why the button works in Desktop but disappears after publishing.
Regarding the licensing concern: external users do not need individual licenses if you use capacity-based embedding.
With Microsoft Power BI Embedded or Premium capacity, licensing is applied at the capacity level, which is specifically designed for scenarios like portals with thousands of users. Your portal can authenticate users (including MFA) while the reports run on the dedicated capacity, so viewers don’t require Power BI licenses. Typically, only report authors need Pro/PPU to publish the content.
So in practice:
Publish to Web → anonymous access, but Power Automate visual will not work.
Power BI Embedded / Premium capacity → supports authenticated users and allows the functionality you’re trying to enable without licensing every viewer.
This is the common approach used for large external reporting portals.
- ibarrau
Hi. That's not possible. You can't use the Power Automate visual in a Publish to web scenario. The docs about the visual specify that at the limitations section:
I hope that helps,
Thank-you - I did realise that the PA Visual is blocked when the report is published, I am looking for alternative methods, if any, that can trigger the PA Flow - I've looked at a button with the action to open a Web URL and set the PA Flow trigger to be HTTP Request but can't seem to get that to function
- ibarrau
It will depend on the action you want to do inside the automate. If it depends on data, then I don't think you can do it, but if it's a stand alone action like "trigger a refresh", then there might be an alternative. I guess the alternative would be building a wrapper web page. Create a simple web (you can use GPT), embedding the published to web report. At the custom web you can add a button calling the Flow. In order to create the call you should start your power automate with "When an http request is received". That way you use a button in a web showing the report.
I hope that make sense
