Recently updates including two more badges: Crawler and Dataminer.

Api, datasets and code are handy tools to share. But as a PowerBI rooky, it can just as difficult to get a overview and navigate through the magic Power BI provides. Thats why I wanted to share some insight into this area to make it easier for those who comes after us.

We have been struggeling for hours to find a way to embed the PowerBI report as an interactive report in the app. With a free trail not all features are possible, and some workarounds are needed.

After a whole lot of tries and fails as you can see below…

… we managed to put a PowerBI tile in the canvas app, with the wanted dimentions to match our apps design.

After publising your report to PowerBI service the same report can be saved as a tile in a dashboard. Having the whole report in one tile will make the vizualisations interactive with each other – which is more user-friendly.

Embedding a Dashboard tile in the Canvas app was not the biggest issue – making it mobile friendly was a bigger problem. It was not possible to create a dashboard with a mobile display that could be embedded in the app. However, splitting one Raport into 2 Dashboard tiles seemed to be the best way to get the wanted result (visually), even though it was not as interactive as we wanted. But its good enough – as shown below.

Getting the data

Dataminer: We created our own data in SharePoint lists showing the House Cup Points, combined with the other lists. This created the base for exporting this data directly into PowerBI

• SharePoint as datasource​
• Lists: Students, PointSystem, Houses, Professors​

In the semantic model we configured Schedueled refresh (every 6th hour)​, ensuring that the data updates often enough so the students can keep track of their progress.

The semantic model provided enough data to create the golden report we later embedded in the app.

Crawler: Search and AI in PowerBI report

In PowerBI we included this cool visual where the data is searchable simply by using natural language to ask what the data contains. This is a flexible way for users to access data even though it is not in any of the visuals.

Let us demonstrate:

Helping out

Walking down the hallway – I bumped into Sopranova struggelig with the same thing I just figured out how to do. Lending a hand and providing some guidance we managed to create a custom page with a embedded dashboard tile for their app.

We were very happy about that.

So if anyone else needs a hand in this spesific area we are happy to help:)