Embedded Power BI Report Server and RLS for Internal and External users with Single Sign-on

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

My Client wants to use "Power BI Report Server" (Power BI in On-Premises World) and NOT Power BI Service.

Following are the requirment:

1. Power BI reports should be used by both internal and external users. [Note: As of now Dashboards in not a supported feature for the on-prem server: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/creating-dashboards-on-POWERBI-REPORT-SERVER/td-p/247...]
2. Need to embed Power BI reports into Applications. How to do this?
3. Application and Power BI reports should support Single Sign-On (SSO)?
4. Embedded Power BI Reports should support Dynamic Row-Level Secirity (RLS)? [On-premises row level security with Power BI is only available with Live Connection: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-tutorial-row-level-security-onprem-ssas-tabular]

Need to know out of above 4, how many can be achieved and how?

Pros and Cons of the Report Server

Advantages:

1. No Gateway Needed: With Power BI Report Server you do not need a gateway. Gateway is only for all connections from Power BI Service. Gateway is responsible for connecting the data set from Power BI service to the data source on-premises. With Power BI Report Server, everything is hosted on-premises. You do not need to install or not to configure the gateway.
2. All Types of Connections Are Supported: At the very early releases of Power BI Report Server, you could have only created a live connection to SQL Server Analysis Services from Power BI reports. Nowadays, you can use any types of connection. The example you have seen earlier in this post used Import Data and then scheduled the report to refresh. You can also use the DirectQuery connection or Live Connection to Power BI report server.
3. Power BI Report Server is a Fully On-Premises Solution: With no internet connection, Power BI report server is a fully on-premises solution. You will not publish your reports to Power BI website, and you will not need any cloud-based technology for that to work. *Power BI report server is an on-premises technology choice for companies who are not yet ready to move to cloud-based technologies.

Disadvantages:

1. Power BI Service Features are not available: Power BI report server has many great features. However, it also has some drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks of the Power BI report server is isolation from the Power BI service. You won’t get great features of the Power BI website on the report server. Power BI Service has features such as
   1. Usage metrics of the report,
   2. Power BI apps,
   3. Q&A and
   4. Quick insights,
   5. Real-time Power BI Dashboards
   6. Content packs
   7. and many other features

These are not available at the moment in the report server.

Report Server team, however, are working hard to make these features available in the on-premises version sometime in the future.

Licensing of the Report Server

Power BI Report Server comes in only two types of licensing;

1. Power BI Premium, or
2. SQL Server Enterprise License with Software Assurance.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/install-powerbi-desktop

Considerations and limitations

Power BI reports in Power BI Report Server, in the Power BI service (http://app.powerbi.com), and in the Power BI mobile apps act almost exactly the same, but a few features are different.

In a browser

Power BI Report Server reports support all visualizations, including:

• Custom visuals

Power BI Report Server reports don’t support:

• R visuals
• ArcGIS maps
• Breadcrumbs
• Power BI Desktop preview features

In the Power BI mobile apps

Power BI Report Server reports support all the basic functionality in the Power BI mobile apps, including:

• Phone report layout: You can optimize a report for the Power BI mobile apps. On your mobile phone, optimized reports have a special icon , and layout.

  

Power BI Report Server reports don’t support these features in the Power BI mobile apps:

• R visuals
• ArcGIS maps
• Custom visuals
• Breadcrumbs
• Geofiltering or bar codes

[Greg_Deckler]

So, typically if you are talking about embedding in a custom application, that is Power BI Embedded, which is essentially the Power BI Service. To the best of my knowledge, PBRS does not support embedding in the same way as the Service. I suppose you could potentially iframe it into the application. 

[Anonymous]

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@Greg_Deckler wrote:

So, typically if you are talking about embedding in a custom application, that is Power BI Embedded, which is essentially the Power BI Service. To the best of my knowledge, PBRS does not support embedding in the same way as the Service. I suppose you could potentially iframe it into the application. 

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Thanks for responding. 

Yes you are correct, there is an iframe option to embed RBIRS into custom applications just by adding the following parameter to the URL: “?rs:Embed=true”. Will RLS work with this option? Also external users can access these reports via application?

Assume that we have SSAS Tabular model and RLS has been designed at SSAS and Power BI Reports have LIVE connection to SSAS Tabular..?

I found one similar thread: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/Allow-external-users-access-to-Reports-one-Report-Ser...