Powerbi.com and Intranet´s Sharepoint integration - questions

[e1]

Hi all!

I am starting to work with PowerBI desktop now, and I never used Power Pivot/Query before, but I´m an Excel advanced user and I build dashboards for my company using Excel integration with Oracle database.

Right now I created my first PowerBI dashboard using the Desktop app, published it to PowerBI.com and using the embedded code to display the dashboard in our company´s Intranet, that runs on a basic version of Sharepoint 2010, if Im sure.

I have three main questions:

1. Is there a "simpler" way of doing this? Can i "link" my PowerBI desktop dashboard to our Sharepoint intranet, without going thru Powerbi.com?

2. Security is a MAJOR concern here, and I still dont understand the risks involved in the process i just described. Our data and reports are NOT displayed to the outside world wide web, right? Just our intrantet? Or when create the xml code to embed in sharepoint, I automatically make it public?

3. Every modification i apply to the PowerBI desktop dashboard is NOT replicated on the Sharepoint display. It changes on PowerBI after i re-publish it, but even if I generate another xml code and update Sharepoint page, the dashboard that users see in the intranet is the older version. I need to DELETE the dashboard on PowerBI.com, re-publish the one on PIDesktop, and them re-create a new code and embed it in Sharepoit. Quite complicated and troublesome, given the amount of updates daily the file is throuhg. Is there a simpler quicker way of doing it?

THANKS A LOT FOR YOU TIME AND HELP!!

Marcelo

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I have the same problems and doubts about the conection between Sharepoint Intranet and Power BI...

Have you already resolve them?

Thank you for the help! 😃

[Cbuttler]

Hi All,

Quickish question.

I have a work book set up with 3 excel data source document which sit on a colleagues laptop. I am trying to link the work book (which I am accessing form the desktop app) to our company sharepoint site.

I have moved the documents, played around a bit but can't seem to link them. To be honest I don't have a clue.

Is there a step by step process I could follow to acheive this?

Thanks

Chris

[BryantAvey]

This is a pretty big question, even though it seems like it should be simple.  Here are a couple of things that might help:

1) If you're on SharePoint 2010 or SharePoint 2013 on-premesis - meaning that your company hosts the servers for SharePoint, then your best bet for doing this will be to activate the SharePoint BI Features.  Then once activated, configured and properly installed in SharePoint (your farm admin team will know if this is already done). then you can create a PowerPivot Gallery.  A PowerPivot Gallery allows you to upload Excel Spreadsheets that are connected to your corporate Oracle database and share them to other users. You can also build and develop custom PowerView reports directly from the uploaded spreadsheet data.  This keeps everything secure.

2) To use PowerBI.com you really need to either 1- have all your data in the Microsoft Azure cloud for live access, or 2 - you'll need to upload the data to the Power BI environment everytime your data changes and you want your reports to reflect that.  If you data is in the cloud then it can be "live" and reflect "live changes".  Otherwise it's a manual upload and refresh process.

3) if you develop simple Excel Pivot charts - you can host those in SharePoint directly using Excel Services, and you can even embed them right into your page for an interactive spreadsheet page using a SharePoint Excel Services webpart.

4) any data you use with the Power BI "Publish to web" option is technically available to anyone wiht the link. This means that your data could be viewed by anyone in the world if they have the URL.  So This is probably not what you want.

Hope that helps a bit. Let us know if you have more questions and we can help further.

Thanks,

Bryant

[e1]

Thank you both Bryant and Smoupre for taking the time to answer my questions!

But I have more questions reggarding your instructions, and if you could further your assistance, i would be very grateful!

"on-premises" means our sharepoint server is inside our IT network, right? 🙂

1) Activating SharePoint BI Features: we dont have a sharepoint analyst/expert in the company, and the network admin told me that we run a very basic "free" version of Sharepoint 2010, as we only update a few static pages in our intranet. I have ZERO Sharepoint knowledge, so im uncertain if this version has this BI FEATURE. Does it?? Also, do we need a Sharepoint specialist to work with these configurations? If we do, then its a dead end since budget is zero.

2) Insteado of using PowerPivot on Excel, cant I use PowerBI to connect to this Gallery on Sharepoint?? Using Excel´s Power Pivot is not exactly the desired solution, because the task I received this year was to completely erradicate Excel from the equation of our KPI´s and Dashboards, and migraten to a tool or service that connects directly to out Oracle database and ERP. If I use PowerPivot, I will end up at the same place i started.

3) If i use Powerbi.com, and forget a bit about the security issue, cant I use the "connector" to keep the data updated? Ive seem Youtube videos of this tool, and it seems to make the connection between a internal database and the dashboards on Powerbi.com.

Having our data on Azure is not an option, since its a paid service. If the data refreshes at least once a day on Powerbi.com, then its already a good solution for us, and all we need is to solve the security issue.

4) SHARE FEATURE: I remember watching old videos and reading about a SHARE feature on Powerbi.com where you could share your reports with the people with the same company email address as you. That feature would be just PERFECT for our needs, because we already have Exchange 365, everyody in the company has a valid Outlook.com business email, and therefore, everybody has a Powerbi.login. That share feature would give a safe and reliable access to our dashboards. Is it still working? I cant seem to find this "SHARE" option anywhere on Powerbi.com!!!

5) Bottonline is, i need to display the PowerBI desktop dashboards we are creating in our intranet. We also have a Wordpress server fully operational here, and the pages of our Intranet are created and displayed both on Sharepoint and Wordpress, depending of what they are. Would the Wordpress present a better and more secure option to display our dashboards??

I cant express how much I would be grateful for you help, and I must apologize beforehand for my lenghty questions. Thank you very much for all your patience and shared knowledge!!

[Greg_Deckler]

If you are using the "Publish to Web" feature to generate your embed code, then that is not technically "secure". Anyone that has that link can view the report.

There is a new Power BI Preview Web Part for SharePoint Online, but that will not help you with SharePoint 2010 on premises.

Using Publish to Web (which it sounds like you are), the report is cached in the Service and can take an hour or so to expire and thus see the changes after publishing.