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Greg_Deckler

Enabling the New Power BI Preview Web Part in SharePoint Online

Some of us have been waiting a long time for the new SharePoint Online Web Part for Power BI. Microsoft has released the announcement here along with a new video on how to use it. However, there are a few pre-requisites that are required in order to get to the point in the video where you can use the Power BI web part. This article covers those pre-requisites.

 

The important part of the video to pay attention to is that they use the Power BI web part on a "modern" or "Site Page". This is a new type of page that recently appeared in SharePoint Online. It's sort-of-kind-of like Publishing Pages but not really. In any event, if you can't create a "modern" page in SharePoint Online, you can't really use the new Power BI web part. I have checked both Wiki and Web Part Pages and the Power BI web part is nowhere to be found when editing those types of pages.

 

Checking if Site Pages ("Modern" Pages) are Enabled

To check whether or not you can create Site Pages, do the following:

  1. Navigate to any SharePoint Online site to which you have Contributor permissions or better
  2. Navigate to Site contents
  3. Navigate to Site pages
  4. Click the drop-down when creating an new page and you should see options for Wiki Page, Web Part Page, Site Page and Link

If you see Site Page, you are good to go, you can create a new Site Page and pick-up where the video starts. If not, read on.

 

Enabling Site Pages ("Modern" Pages)

The first thing to check are your Office 365 Tenant settings and SharePoint Online Administration settings. You will need administrative privileges to your tenant in order to perform these procedures.

 

Enabling First Release Features

  1. Navigate to https://portal.office.com and logon as an administrator
  2. On the left-hand side, expand Settings and then Organization profile
  3. Under Release preferences, make sure that the release track is First release for everyone or First release for selected users and that you are one of those users

 

Enabling SharePoint Online Preview Features

  1. From within the Office 365 administration portal, scroll down and expand Admin centers on the left-hand side and choose SharePoint
  2. Click over to the new tab that opens and on the left-hand side select Settings
  3. Scroll down until you see the option for Site Pages and select the radio button Allow users to create Site Pages
  4. Scroll down until you see the option for Prevew Features and select the radio button Enable preview features
  5. Scroll down and click OK

 

You should now be able to go back to your site and create a new Site Page and follow along with the video.

 

But I Still Can't Create Site Pages

OK, so while this should enable everything you need to get Site Pages and the Power BI preview web part working, at this point you may still not be able to create Site Pages. Couple things that could be going on here. One, if you just enabled these features, it may take a bit of time to become enabled in the tenant. So, wait a few hours or a day and then check again. However, it may also be an odd quirk that I have run into and fixed using the following process. Note, this process seemed to work on sites that had been created prior to all of the new features coming out, like "modern" pages. There may be variations to this process but this is what worked for me:

  1. Navigate to your SharePoint Online site
  2. Click the gear icon in the upper-right and then choose Site Settings
  3. Under Site Actions, click Manage site features
  4. If SharePoint Server Publishing feature is enabled, deactivate it
  5. Navigate back to managing site features and this time, deactivate the Wiki Page Home Page feature
  6. Navigate back to managing site features one more time and reactivate Wiki Page Home Page feature

Now you should be able to create Site Pages and follow along with the video.

 

References

 

 

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