PowerPlatformLearn | Rory Neary

Microsoft have recently introduced the ability to create Solution Aware Power BI Reports inside Dataverse. In this post I’m going to show you all the steps needed for this to happen, including the gotchas.

Below is a table of contents and if you’re feeling confident head to the “Let’s build” section.

End to End video tutorial

This video take you through all the steps needed to create your solution.

Why is this important for Power BI in the Power Platform?

Until now we’ve never had the ability to do this before, and Power BI reports have had an uncomfortable relationship with Power Platform solutions. Essentially, we’ve not been able to create full Power Platform solutions with fully spoorted reporting options.

The Application Management Life-Cycle Value Proposition

A great many Dataverse projects have reporting as a key element in enabling users to better understand the nature and quality of the data held within the system in its totality. Power BI is an excellent tool for this analysis, and until these recent developments it has been necessary to create reporting separate to the Power Platform solution.

This is problematic as there is effectively a disconnect between the reporting and the data being reported on and effectively an increased IT management burden.

By making Solution Aware Power BI reports we make our application management life-cycle much simpler.

You’ll have a solution that finally is fully complete, inclusive of reporting similar to the one shown below.

Let’s build!

Setup checks

Confirm that your Power Platform environment is in the same region as Power BI.

Environment configuration

We’ll need to make sure that the Power Platform environment is “aware” of Power BI.

Go to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments select your environment. Select Dynamics 365 Apps below. Head to

Search for Power BI Extensions, and install – takes about 10 minutes

Create a simple solution

You can create a simple solution for yourself inside the environment. My preference is to do this and connect it to the Account entity and build a simple model driven app to go with it. At this point it will look as show below, but without the dataset and report

Create and publish a report

Shucks – this is fiddly, so best for us to look at creating a simple report. Key features are that it is tied to Dataverse and the environment domain is created using a parameter.

VIDEO REQUIRED HERE

Note : We can publish to ANY POWER BI WORKSPACE at this stage

Introducing the report into the solution

This is the cool bit, but relatively simple. Add the report you’ve just created as shown below.

Associating the dataset with the report parameters

But you’re not done yet. The report doesn’t know about the parameters yet. For this to work we’ll need to edit the parameters.

You’ll need to create a parameter and associate it with the current domain. Note – it is possible to associate it with an environment variable, which would be relevant it you are using non-dataverse data sources.

Publishing all your changes

In line with normal practice I would publish my customizations by heading to All as show below.

Viewing the report in the new Power BI workspace

This is super simple. Go to the report and Open in Power BI

I’ve created a very simple report here, however this should be seen as the start point for future development work.

Editing the report

Initially I was confused as to how this would work, however you simply need to take your original PBIX file, edit it and publish it up to the newly created workspace (not the temporary one we used earlier).

How to refresh the report

Initially, when the report is published to the cloud it won’t be set up to referesh. Just go to the workspace, find the dataset

One you’re there head to data source credentials and sign in.