Power BI offers flexibility in how reports can be deployed to users, particularly within Microsoft 365 applications such as Teams, Dynamics 365, and SharePoint. In this FAST class, we'll focus on embedding a Power BI report directly within a SharePoint page.

Why embed Power BI in SharePoint?

Embedding a Power BI report in SharePoint can be useful for scenarios such as:

• Showing quarterly performance metrics to a team.
• Providing a report that online meeting participants can follow along with.
• Creating a customer-portal-style experience where users can view data alongside documents in SharePoint.

Requirements

Before embedding a Power BI report in SharePoint, you'll need:

• At least a Power BI Pro license.
• Publishing permissions for the SharePoint page where you're adding the report.
• Membership permissions in Power BI for the report you're adding.
• A SharePoint page that uses the modern layout.

This class also assumes you're already familiar with navigating Power BI and SharePoint.

Adding the Power BI Report to SharePoint

Start on the SharePoint page where you want the report to appear.

1. Select the button in the upper-right corner to enter edit mode.
2. Move to the location where you want to add the report and select the plus icon.
3. Search for Power BI.
4. Select the Power BI result and choose Add Report.
5. Paste the link to the Power BI report you want to embed.

After you add the report link, SharePoint automatically populates additional information and displays a preview of the report.

Configuring the embedded report

The information pane provides several options for configuring how the report appears. You can:

• Select the report page you want to display.
• Choose an aspect ratio.
• Show or hide the Navigation Pane.
• Show or hide the Filter pane.
• Show or hide the action bar.

When you're satisfied with the configuration, select Publish to make the updated SharePoint page available to your users.

Working with Power BI in SharePoint

Because the Power BI report is directly embedded, many of the options available in Power BI remain accessible from SharePoint. Depending on permissions and licensing, these can include:

• Downloading the file.
• Managing report permissions.
• Exporting data to Excel.
• Sharing the report.
• Creating personal bookmarks.
• Viewing the report at a larger size or in full screen.
• Refreshing visuals to pull in updated data.

Using Personal bookmarks

Personal bookmarks can be helpful when you frequently move between different filtered views of your data. For example, you could filter a report to Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and save that selection as a personal bookmark. You can then reset the report to its normal view and return to your saved bookmark whenever you need that filtered view again.

Refreshing report data

If the underlying dataset changes while you're viewing the report, you can use the refresh option to update all of the report visuals with the new data.

Key takeaway

Embedding Power BI in SharePoint gives users a convenient way to interact with report data directly alongside other SharePoint content. Once the required licensing, permissions, and modern SharePoint layout are in place, you can add a report to a page, configure how it displays, and provide users with many of the familiar Power BI features without requiring them to leave SharePoint.