Learn Power BI Publishing and Sharing

Publishing and Sharing

A tremendous amount of work has gone into the report that we’ve created so far, from importing the data to creating the data model and calculations, to designing and

formatting report pages. The report is looking good, but the value of the report is minimal if only the report author has access to it. To maximize the value of the report, the report must be shared with other members of the organization. This chapter will familiarize you with the Power BI service and demonstrate how to publish your finalized report to the service and share it with others.

After reading this chapter, you will have a basic understanding of the overall layout and features of the Power BI service as well as how to publish and share reports created in Power BI Desktop.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Getting an account
Introducing the service
Publishing and sharing

Technical requirements

You will need the following requirements to complete this chapter:

An internet connection.
Microsoft Power BI Desktop.
An Office 365 account or Power BI trial.
If you have skipped any of the previous chapters, you can download

LearnPowerBI.pbix from GitHub at https://github.com/ PacktPublishing/Learn-Power-BI-second-edition/tree/main/
Chapter08.
Check out the following video to see the Code in Action: https://bit. ly/3F3AodD

Getting an account

Publishing and sharing work is typically done through the Power BI service. As we covered in Chapter 1, Introduction to Business Intelligence and Power BI, the Power BI service is

a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) online platform and can be used for report creation, report editing, and data ingest, as well as for sharing, collaborating, and viewing reports. However, in order to use the Power BI service, you need to have an Office 365 account. Once you have an Office 365 account, you can sign up for a free Power BI trial.

Office 365

If you already have an Office 365 account, then you are all set. You can use that account’s email address to sign up for a free trial of Power BI or have your IT department or Office 365 administrator assign you a free or Pro Power BI license. If you do not have an Office 365 account, then you will need to sign up for a free Office 365 trial. You can sign up for a free trial here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/try.

Under the Try Office 365 for free heading, click on Try 1 month free. One month should give you plenty of time to read the rest of this chapter!

Power BI trial

Once you have an Office 365 account, you will also need a Power BI trial license, Pro license, or Premium Per User (PPU) license. Your IT administrator or Office 365 administrator can assign you a Pro or PPU license for Power BI. Otherwise, follow these steps to register for a trial of Power BI:

In a web browser, enter https://powerbi.com into the browser bar and press the Enter key.

After signing up and activating your Power BI trial, you are ready to log in to the service.

Introducing the service

The Power BI service, or simply the service, is a web-based SaaS product that is complementary to the Power BI Desktop. The service provides a means by which Power BI users can create new datasets and reports as well as publish, share, and collaborate on data models and reports that are created in Power BI Desktop. The service is built around storing reports, dashboards, workbooks, datasets, and dataflows.

Let’s take a brief look at the service and the major capabilities it provides.

Touring the service

Once logged in to the service, the Power BI service interface is somewhat reminiscent of the Power BI Desktop interface, although somewhat simpler.

The Power BI service’s user interface is comprised of three main areas, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 8.1 – A tour of the service

We will now investigate these three areas more closely. Please refer to Figure 8.1

throughout the upcoming sections regarding the header, navigation pane, and canvas.

Header

The header area contains a number of useful items. On the far left is a waffle icon that, when clicked, provides links to other Office 365 applications. On the right-hand side of the Power BI text is a breadcrumb widget that helps you to keep track of where you are within the Power BI service. On the right-hand side of the screen, there is a Search bar and some icons.

The first icon to the right of the Search bar is for Notifications. This icon looks like a bell, although depending on your resolution and browser zoom settings, you may just see ellipses (…). Clicking this bell icon or the ellipses and then Notifications presents the NOTIFICATION CENTER as an overlay of the right-hand side of the canvas. Any important notices can be viewed here. This includes notifications from Microsoft, as well as any data alerts that you might configure.

The next icon to the right of the Notifications icon is a gear. The gear icon provides links for Settings in a drop-down menu. The menu options are as follows:

Manage personal storage
- Admin portal
- Manage gateways
- Settings
- Manage embed codes

Your Settings options may be slightly different depending on your permissions. Let’s take a brief look at each of these options:

Selecting Manage personal storage presents information in the canvas regarding your storage. At the top of this page is a graphic that allows you to see how much personal storage you have consumed. Power BI Pro users get 10 GB of personal storage. This page also lists datasets owned by the current user and lists how much space each of the datasets consumes, along with the associated reports, dashboards, and other information. This page is a convenient location for removing unused datasets and related artifacts.

Depending on whether or not you are an administrator, you may or may not have access to all or part of the Admin portal. The Admin portal provides an interface where we can see usage metrics, manage users, view audit logs, adjust tenant and capacity settings, and manage embed codes and organization visuals, as well as manage data flow settings and workspaces.
The Manage gateways link allows the user to view and edit gateway settings within the organization. We will cover gateways later in this book.
The Settings link provides access to various options related to privacy, language, account, development, and the integration of certain custom visuals, such as ArcGIS maps for Power BI. The Settings page also allows you to review your configuration for Alerts and Subscriptions.
Manage embed codes provides a page that users can use to manage their

own embed codes. Embed codes are how Power BI content is shared externally to the Power BI service. This area differs from the Admin portal’s embed

code management as the Admin portal allows all embed codes within the organization to be managed, while this area only lists the currently logged-in user’s embed codes.

The third icon to the right of the Search bar, a down arrow, provides Download links so that you can download various components of Power BI, including the following:

Power BI Desktop
Data Gateway
Paginated Report Builder
Power BI for Mobile
Analyze in Excel updates

The fourth icon to the right of the Search bar, a question mark, provides Help & Support links that are helpful if you want to learn and get support for Power BI. Some of these links are as follows:

Getting started with Power BI
- Documentation
- Learn
- Community
- Get help
- Power BI for developers
- Privacy & cookies
- Accessibility shortcuts
- About Power BI

The fifth icon, a smiley face, provides Feedback links to the community forums, including the following:

Submit an idea
Submit an issue
Submit feedback

Regardless of where you are in the service, the Header area remains a constant fixture, providing immediate access to the icons and links covered in this section.

Navigation pane

Initially collapsed, the navigation pane can be expanded by using the pancake icon (three horizontal lines) at the top. Clicking this icon will reveal the Show the navigation pane option. Once expanded, clicking this icon again will reveal the Hide the navigation

pane option. The navigation pane contains a number of useful navigational links. We will briefly cover each of these links here.

The Home link takes you to a page that serves as an overall entry point to the Power BI service. This page lists reports that have been favorited and are frequently accessed, as well as recent reports and workspaces. In addition, reports that have been shared with you will appear here, as well as recommended apps and useful links that you can use to explore learning opportunities.

The Favorites and Recent links are fly-out menus that list reports and dashboards that have been favorited or recently accessed. Clicking the See all link at the bottom of these fly-out menus navigates to a page with all favorites or recent content listed.
Beneath the Recent link is a plus (+) icon for Create. Create is a fairly recent addition that allows you to enter data manually or choose a published dataset and then begin creating a report with the chosen data.
Underneath the Create link is a link for Datasets. This link lists all datasets the current user owns or has permission to use.
The Goals link is next in the list. Goals are a Premium-only feature that allows the creation of scorecards. Goals are simply metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that an organization wishes to track and can be assigned to individuals responsible for achieving the specified goal. Scorecards display the various goals and subgoals being tracked.
The next link down, Apps, takes you to a page that lists any apps that you have created or have access to. Apps are collections of dashboards and reports that can be easily shared and deployed to large numbers of specific business users or an entire organization in order to empower people throughout the business to make data- driven decisions.
Beneath Apps, the Shared with me link lists any content that has been shared with the user by others.
Workspaces is another fly-out menu that lists any workspaces that have been created by, or shared with, the currently logged-in user. Workspaces are a way of organizing your dashboards, reports, workbooks, datasets, and dataflows. Workspaces also serve as shared environments for a group of users, and a workspace is the technology underlying apps in Power BI. Every user starts with one workspace, My workspace. The My workspace link is a drop-down menu

that displays sub-categories for Dashboards, Reports, Workbooks, Datasets, and Dataflows. Users can create as many other workspaces as desired and each of these workspaces can also contain multiple dashboards, reports, workbooks, datasets, and dataflows. Creating workspaces other than the default My workspace workspace is a Power BI Pro license feature.
At the bottom of the navigation pane is a Get data link. This link provides a central location for discovering apps that are published to the organization, and published third-party apps, as well as for retrieving data from files, databases, and creating dataflows. In addition, there are links to Samples and Partner Showcase reports as well as a link to build content based upon Published datasets.

The navigation pane is useful for quickly switching between major content areas in the Power BI service. Let’s continue to explore additional major sections of the Power BI service interface.

Canvas

Similar to the Canvas area in the Desktop, the particular content and use of the Canvas area in the service depend on exactly where you are in the service and what you are doing. Suffice to say, this is the main area where you will look at reports and interact with the service.

Publishing and sharing

Continuing with the example scenario we introduced in Chapter 3, Up and Running with Power BI Desktop, Pam is excited to share the new utilization report with the rest of the organization. She decides that using the Power BI service is the best and most secure way to do this, especially since she wants to leverage Row-Level Security (RLS) in order to keep people focused on the information that is most important to their role. Pam’s organization does not have Power BI Premium, so this means that everyone viewing the report will need a Power BI Pro license.

Creating a workspace

Pam decides to create a workspace specifically for the reports that she will be publishing to the service. She expects to publish many more reports other than just her new utilization report, so she decides to create a new workspace for these reports instead of cluttering up her default My workspace workspace. Follow these steps to get started:

Click on Workspaces and then, at the bottom of the fly-out menu, click Create a workspace. The Create a workspace dialog is displayed on the right-hand side of the screen, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8.2 – Create a workspace dialog

Enter a name for the workspace, such as Learn Power BI 2nd Edition, and then click the Save button. The new workspace is created, and you will end up on the workspace home page, as shown in Figure 8.3:

Figure 8.3 – Workspace home page (Get data page)

Now that we have created a workspace, we can publish our report.

Publishing

Let’s publish our report to the service. To publish the report, we must switch back to Power BI Desktop. Follow these steps to publish the report:

Open Power BI Desktop.
Open the most recent saved copy of your saved report by selecting the File tab on the ribbon and then Open report.
Navigate to the most recent copy of your report and then click the Open button.

Before proceeding and publishing the report, navigate to each page of the report and reset the filters by holding down the Ctrl key and then pressing the Reset button on the lower-right corner of each page. Finally, before proceeding, choose the page you wish to be displayed initially to users; in this case, this will be the Introduction page. Publishing the report to the service publishes the report with any and all current filters and slicer selections. In addition, the currently selected page at the time of publishing becomes the default page for the published report.

Click on the File tab of the ribbon again and choose Sign in. The Sign in option appears at the bottom of the File menu. Sign into the Power BI service using an existing work account or the account created in the Getting an account section of this chapter.
Click the File tab of the ribbon again, choose Publish, and then Publish to Power BI. If prompted, click the Save button to save any changes.
The Publish to Power BI dialog is displayed. This dialog displays all the workspaces under the Select a destination heading, as shown in Figure 8.4:

Figure 8.4 – Publish to Power BI dialog

Select the workspace you created previously in the Creating a workspace section of this chapter and then click the Select button.

The Publishing to Power BI dialog is displayed.

Figure 8.5 – Publishing to Power BI dialog in progress

Once publishing is complete, this dialog changes to indicate success or failure.

Figure 8.6 – Publishing to Power BI dialog; publishing complete

Upon getting a Success! message, click the Open ‘LearnPowerBI2ndEdition.pbix’ in Power BI link beneath the Success! message as shown in Figure 8.6. Clicking this link opens a browser window or tab that opens the report in the Power BI service. You may be prompted to log in to the service.

The published report in the service should now look and operate exactly like it does within Power BI Desktop, including all the slicers, filters, buttons, bookmarks, and other features. In some cases, there may be slight discrepancies in the display of certain visual elements, but these are rare.

Note that the Filters pane is displayed by default but, in the default reading view of the report, the Visualizations and Fields panes are not displayed in the service. Also note that instead of page tabs at the bottom of the report, a collapsible Pages pane is displayed to the left of the report.

Click on each page of the report to confirm that each page looks correct. You can also work through the Testing subsection of the Finishing up section of Chapter 7, Creating the Final Report, but this time using the published report in the service.

What happens when you publish?

When a report is published from Power BI Desktop to the service, multiple objects are created in the Power BI service. To understand this behavior, expand the Navigation pane and then click on the down arrow chevron (V-shaped symbol) for the Learn Power BI 2nd Edition workspace in order to expand the Learn Power BI 2nd Edition section of the Navigation pane.

Your screen should now resemble Figure 8.7:

Figure 8.7 – Workspace subsections

Note that there are five subsections to the workspace, as follows:

Dashboards
Reports
Workbooks
Datasets
Dataflows

We will cover all of these elements in more depth later, but for now, note that the filename of the Power BI Desktop file that was published to the workspace appears underneath both Reports as well as Datasets. During publishing, Power BI takes the underlying data model in the report and publishes this as a dataset. The report pages are published as a separate object under Reports, and these report pages are linked to this published dataset. Publishing these as separate, but linked, objects allows the dataset to be reused for the creation of additional, independent reports from within the service. We will discuss this in the next chapter, Chapter 9, Using Reports in the Power BI Service.

Sharing

Now that the report has been published, the next step is to share your work with other users within the organization.

Sharing is a Power BI Pro license feature. Th s means that all of the users that can view a shared report must have a Power BI Pro license to view a shared report. Power BI PPU works similarly. If the user publishing the report publishes the report to a Premium Per User workspace, then all users must have a Premium Per User license to view the report.

However, Power BI Premium capacities work differently. With Power BI Premium capacities, reports that are published to a Premium workspace only require the report publisher to have a Power BI Pro license. Individuals with whom a report is shared only need a Power BI Free license to view reports that are published to a Premium workspace.

Make sure that you are viewing the report in the service. Note that a visual element analogous to the ribbon in Power BI Desktop exists in the service when viewing a report. This ribbon provides access to common features and operations within the service that are specific to reports.

To share the report with others, perform the following steps:

In the report ribbon, click the Share link, as shown in Figure 8.8:

Figure 8.8 – The ribbon and Share link in the service

The Send link dialog is displayed, as shown in Figure 8.9:

Figure 8.9 – The Send link dialog in the service

First, determine what type of sharing link you wish to create. The default option is

People in your organization with the link can view and share, as shown in Figure

8.9. To change this, click the box that contains the text People in your organization with the link can view and share, and the dialog changes to Figure 8.10:

Figure 8.10 – Send link dialog options

Select Specific people and ensure that both Allow recipients to share this report and Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report are unchecked.
Click the Apply button.
You are now back to the Send link dialog shown in Figure 8.9. However, instead of the text People in your organization with the link can view and share, you now see Specific people can view.
Where the dialog says Enter a name or email address, enter the email address or name of a user with whom you wish to share the report.

These email addresses can be internal to the Power BI/Office 365 tenant or external email addresses such as @gmail.com and @outlook.com addresses. These can also be email addresses of groups within Azure AD. If the email addresses are external, a warning message is displayed, noting that the report is being shared with users external to the organization. Note that if you’re sharing with email addresses external to the tenant, those users will need to have an Office 365/Azure AD login, as well as a Power BI Pro license, in order to view the report.

Optionally, use the Add a message (optional) field to include a personalized message alongside the notification users receive when sharing the report.
When ready, click the Send button or choose one of the three icons, Copy link, Outlook, or Teams. Copy link copies the link to the clipboard. Outlook brings up an Outlook mail message with the link in the body of the message. Teams launches a Share to Microsoft Teams dialog, allowing you to share the link with a person, group, or channel in Teams.

Once a report has been shared with a user, that report will now appear when they select the Shared with me link in the Navigation pane.

Summary

In this chapter, we introduced the Power BI service. First, we introduced multiple ways to get a Power BI account that we can use with the service. We then took a tour of the major interface elements within the service. Next, we learned how to publish a report that’s been developed in the Desktop version to the service. This included learning how to create workspaces and understanding exactly what occurs when a Desktop file is published to the service. Once published, we then learned how to share a report with other individuals and groups, both within an organization and outside it.

In the next chapter, we will explore everything that can be done with reports in the service, including viewing, exporting, embedding, editing, and creating them!

Questions

As an activity, try to answer the following questions on your own:

What are the two ways of getting a Power BI account?
What are the three main interface elements of the Power BI service?
What is a workspace and why would you use one?
Do you publish reports from the Desktop version or the service?
What two objects are created/updated in the Power BI service when a report is published?
True or false: reports can only be shared with internal users of an organization?
True or false: reports can only be shared with single users?
What options are available when sharing reports?

Our New E-Store -> AnyTechKey.com

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Download books & sOFTWARE

Contact us
civilmdcgroup@gmail.com