PBI Dashboards in Dynamics - leads users back to the Report, but we want to share everything via App

[mmace1]

We're experimenting with embedding Power BI in Dynamics. 

One can embed Dashboards only.  

• Problem 1: so then one needs permissions for the Dashboard, or the Workspace it resides in.  We usually only give permissions to Apps. We only give Workspace access, of any kind, to creators, and never share dashboards/reports directly. 
• Problem 2 (bigger imo): If one clicks through the dashboard from CRM, they eventually get to the Report, not the App.  And again, we want to share everything via Apps, not Reports. 

Any way around this? I'm considering just abandoning Apps entirely, and instead go back to sharing everything at the Workspace level. 

[collinq]

HI @mmace1 ,

We had the same basic issue.  We have Dynamics 365 and have users in that tool that need to see reports.  We ended up making the Apps as we wanted with the security we wanted and we would embed only the reports into Dynamics.  In fact, in some cases, we simply put a splash screen into dynamics that linked to the APP.  Part of this was becasue we had Power BI users that needed the reports that were not part of the Dynamics setup.

When we embedded a report "into" Dynamics we didn't make it part of the Dynamics system, we embedded it so that the report link in Dynamics opened the Power BI APP screen (albeight within the Dynamics wrapper).  

We couldn't really get our security to work right between Dynamics permissions, App permissions and Workspace/report permissions.  And that is why when we embedded we made it just like when you embed to a web page - where the security and capabilities are all controlled by the Power BI app and nothing else.

[mmace1]

@collinq  Sorry, I don't follow fully.  

Were you embedding the Apps directly in Dynamics, i.e. so that people could see the App from within Dynamics. Or 'just' providing a link that went to an App? 

For embedding these things, were you going thru Power Apps portals, or PBI embedded for organizations? 

Alternatively if my questions don't make any sense (might not, am not familar with CE at all, nor sharing PBI content in anything but the PBI service), feel free to ignore them and if you have time, restate your setup, thanks!

[collinq]

Hey @mmace1 ,

The way we did it was to send the Dynamics user to the Power BI app.  By trying to embed into Dynamics itself we ended up getting stuck in the permissions loop of Dynamics.  And, we didn't have the finite report control that we wanted and needed in Power BI.  

Basically, we had an Iframe or other web page insert that was Power BI app and was not the Dyanamics security.  Basically, Dynamics (on those pages) was just the header, footer, side frames with navigation but the report was Power BI App and not "embedded" into the security of Dynamics.  You could argue that the Powre BI page in Dynamics was just "inserted" and not "embedded".  Kind of like if you "inserted" a weather map web page into a Dynamics page - the weather map comes from a website and is open to everybody and is not controlled in any way from Dynamics.  That is how we did the Power BI app.