@MarkSL, I will answer what I can from your questions. I am deploying Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) to my production environment tonight after several months in test.
Regarding your first paragraph, it is my understanding that PBIRS does not support true dashboards, only reports. You can brand SSRS and that branding carries over to PBIRS. However there are bugs with the branding implementation in PBIRS (see my posted issue on this).
1) PBIRS does in fact "replace" SSRS. There are visual differences, but they are minimal. You do not need to move or copy the ReportServer databases, but you do need to uninstall SSRS first to prevent conflicts over URL reservations. The recommendation is to back up your SSRS ReportServer databases prior to starting the PBIRS installation process so you can roll them back if needed as the database changes are supposed to be one-way.
Also, all existing SSRS reports, data sources, and subscriptions remain in place and work under PBIRS (based on my own testing/situation). Deploying SSRS reports and data sources continues to work as before (I use Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise, and have not had any issues supporting SSRS reports in my test PBIRS instance that are then deployed to the production SSRS 2016 instance).
2) Yes, the folder security is identical for SSRS and PBIRS, and the PBIRS reports can be saved to the same folders as SSRS reports. PBIRS reports appear under a heading of "POWER BI REPORTS", while the SSRS reports appear under a heading of "PAGINATED REPORTS" within the applicable folder.
3) Yes, for SSRS reports. I have configured scheduled data refreshes for Power BI reports but not report subscriptions. I'm not sure that subscriptions are currently supported for Power BI reports.
4) Almost all of my SSRS reports pull both dropdown criteria values and report data source values from stored procedures, and they all work fine under PBIRS. For Power BI reports, I have one direct-connected to an SSAS cube and two that use an imported data model which is refreshed each night. This requires the October 2017 GA release. The older June 2017 release was SSAS only.
My Power BI report data models import data from SQL Server views that I created specifically to surface data to outside (of the source system) report consumers. I haven't tried using a stored procedure to provide data to a Power BI report, but when you select SQL Server as the data source you can specify a SQL data command.
Notes about the scheduled refreshes, and also Power BI logging in general:
- The refreshes do fail occassionally, and the latest status is shown under "Manage > Scheduled refresh" for the specific report.
- The refreshes are configured as SQL Agent jobs just like SSRS report subscriptions. Reporting on SSRS report subscription history will include the Power BI data refreshes.
- Report execution history for Power BI reports is not the same as SSRS reports. Different numeric codes are used, and EVERY interaction with a report is logged (each filter, each slicer, each click on a visual, etc.). I wanted to include report execution stats for Power BI on my SSRS execution monitoring report and it killed my results. Future R&D effort 🙂
- There is one bug when first setting up data sources for a Power BI report that also needs a scheduled refresh. Both of my reports have 2 data sources, so that may be causing it. Basically, you set up the data sources before proceeding to create the scheduled refresh, but after entering the data source info the applicable menu items lock up. The workaround is to re-deploy the report to the server, re-enter the data source info, and then voila, you can create the scheduled refresh. A relatively minor annoyance, once per report.
I hope this info helps!
