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randyminder
Frequent Visitor

Power Bi as a reporting tool for our web app

We are completely rewriting our current browser based product. For reporting we're currently using Crystal Reports. I've just started learning Power BI. I've seen enough to be impressed. Our new product will be hosted on Microsoft Azure. Can Power BI act as a general purpose report writer for us? We'd need the ability for our app to call Power BI with a report definition and then have Power BI retrieve the necessary data and render the report in a web page. Can Power BI be used this way?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

It depends of how are you developing. If you do a report and other developer is the Pro User you must use his credentials and workspace to embed into your app or you have to give the full report to him for embedding purposes. In conclusion, you can have one pro license for all your team but only with your account will be possible embed into your app.

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11 REPLIES 11
Eric_Zhang
Employee
Employee

@randyminder

You can integrate Power BI to your web application following the links in above post. Further more, you could do more customization with Power BI Javascript API, see online demos.

Juramirez
Resolver I
Resolver I

Hi @randyminder

 

Sure, you can do this and more! 

Please check this link: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-developer-embed-sample-app-owns-data/

You must download Power BI Desktop, there you can do your report and after that you must publish it. For embedding purpose you (as developer) must have a pro License to do that. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-developer-embedding/

 

If you need more adivces just tell me 

Hope this helps you

Thank you! You said, " For embedding purpose you (as developer) must have a pro License to do that". Does this mean that every developer on our team needs a Pro license to develop reports for our app, or is just a single license sufficient for the entire team?

Hi @randyminder

 

To do reports in Power BI Desktop is not necessary to have a Pro license. The Pro License is required when you want to embed this reports (made in Power BI Desktop) into your app. See this link : https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-free-vs-pro/

 

Regards

Thank you. My question wasn't about a Pro license for the desktop version. It was for using the embedded version. Do we need just a single pro license or one for every developer who might be developing reports?

It depends of how are you developing. If you do a report and other developer is the Pro User you must use his credentials and workspace to embed into your app or you have to give the full report to him for embedding purposes. In conclusion, you can have one pro license for all your team but only with your account will be possible embed into your app.

Thank you. That was very helpful.

Glad to hear. Let me know if you have any doubt

I guess the only remaining question you could answer for me is this. I know that Power BI is a power analytical tool, much like Tableau. But can it also be used to create standard "banded" reports like Crystal reports does? By banded I mean reports with a standard report header, page header, group header, detail section(s) and respective footers?

Yes, you can do this inserting them as an image in your report pages. Also you can insert Text Box and other visuals that can help you doing this. 

randyminder
Frequent Visitor

We are completely rewriting our current browser based product. For reporting we're currently using Crystal Reports. I've just started learning Power BI. I've seen enough to be impressed. Our new product will be hosted on Microsoft Azure. Can Power BI act as a general purpose report writer for us? We'd need the ability for our app to call Power BI with a report definition and then have Power BI retrieve the necessary data and render the report in a web page. Can Power BI be used this way?

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