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gusly
Helper II
Helper II

Integration with web app

I have some questions about how to handle integration between Power BI and my own web app. I know there is much information to read about this, but I'm still a bit unsure about which approach to take.

What I want to do is this:

  1. Enable users (outside my organization) of my web app to import data from my web app into Power BI for their own use to their own account.
  2. I would also like this data to connect to report templates that I've created, so that they can see reports immediately.
  3. Then it should be possible for the users to update the data, either manually from my web app or automatically.

What are the options I have for handling this scenario and what is the recommended approach? 


I know I can push data through the web api, but will I also be able to handle the second requirement by connecting it to a premade report? According to this (and here's a blog post about it) it should be possible to import a PBIX file as well, but I'm not sure about how to update/replace the data for it through the api once imported. Is it possible? 

If anyone has experience or knowledge about this, please share how you have handled it.

Later, I might also like to include tiles from Power BI in my web app. Just to confirm - to have this the user must have a Power BI account and actively login himself, right? If possible in another way, I would gladly learn how to.

Any information anyone has to share about this would be much appreciated.

7 REPLIES 7
ashishrj
Power Participant
Power Participant

@gusly What I understood from your given requirement and my suggestions:

 

1. If you have your own web app then you would be having database as well which will store data. If this database is a standard database supported by Power BI Desktop Tool, you can easliy import and schdule for data refresh.

 

2. If you have an API, then you could pull data coming from web app into a standard SQL database and then connect with Power BI Desktop and thereafter reports/dashbaords. Here you need to schedule refresh for API (from web app to API) and Database (Database to Power BI) both.

 

3. Also you can directly connect you web app to Power BI Service using REST API. Here no need to schedule data refresh. Data will automatically update and refresh once it hits your web app.

Thank you for the comment

You are right, I have access to the database as well. However, I'm not sure about option one, as don't want shared data for the users. I could go with the API or REST API method though.

Should it be possible for me to handle the scenario described though - to provide both report and data to the account of the users?

I have some more thoughts regarding this.

I thought I came to the conclusion that what I wanted to achieve would actually be possible in a quite simple way, but then I got some problems while testing...

My idea was that I should be able to import (though the API or manually) pre-made reports to Power BI account, then just update the tables of the datasets for them through the REST API. However, it seems that datasets handled by the Power BI Desktop are not possible to update through the REST API. I get an error with the following message:

Posting rows to this type of dataset is not currently supported. Please create your dataset by posting it through the API following the instructions on http://dev.powerbi.com".

 

It's not really an option for me to create the reports within the Power BI web app as it's too limited and as I want to have computed fields for the datasets. I can't find any information how that would be possible to do through the API.

If my thoughts here seem right, please let me know what other approach I could take.

fabrice
Frequent Visitor

@gusly, when you say update, do you mean clear and then insert ?

@fabrice Yes.

Were you able to figure out whether you could embed tiles without requiring a user to login? I'm making an app now and I would like as much of it as possible to be publicly accessible.

No, I haven't yet looked into that.

- - - - -

If anyone knows more about the problems with not being able to update all kinds of datasets through the API, please let me know. I would like to be able to use computed fields.

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