Forum Discussion
Publish to Web
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.
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
Super Usera bit tricky...
With paginated reports you can write a function that makes the http call and encaspluate it in a Power BI report to run it. The refresh button will trigger the call.
I've done something similar for a client aming to call a Azure ML endpoint passing parameters and rendering the output in realtime.
I've improved the same scenario with the paginated report Power Query experience that basically removes the need of writing VBScript function.
in theory you can't publish to web a paginated report... but you would publish a power bi report embedding a paginated report therefore I don't know if it will block you or not... you should test it.