Information Services

Creating and Sharing Power BI Content

Pro Licence holders can create and share content to other University staff members.

How to create a report or dashboard in Power BI

If you are creating reports to distribute and share it is recommended where possible that you connect to data sources, build your data model and design your visualisations in Power BI Desktop. You will need to download Power BI directly from Microsoft. Power BI does not have a Mac compatible desktop application, but Mac users can still user Power BI in their web browser. 

Once downloaded, please sign into the desktop app with your UUN@ed.ac.uk address and password so that the application links to your existing University Office 365 account.

Download Power BI Desktop

 

How to share your reports

Power BI has distinct steps for publishing your content and making it available to others.

If you have created content in Power BI Desktop you will need to initially publish to the Office 365 Power BI service,  you will be able to publish any reports you have created into an App Workspace, these workspaces align with Office 365 Groups. Only users actively contributing to the report creation should be members of this workspace.

To share your reports or dashboards with other members of staff you need to publish to a Power BI App. All members of staff have access to view Power BI Apps, only users with a Pro License have access to workspaces. 

 

Power BI Publishing Graphic

Embedding Reports 

The best way to share your Power BI Content with others, is to Publish your content to an App. All Staff Members have access to Power BI to view apps via app.powerbi.com. However, should you wish to show your Report / App / Content outside of Power BI itself, you can embed this content as required. There are three ways to do this:

Embed

Securely embed your content in a website or portal. From your App select 'File > Embed' to do this. This will create code for you to be able to embed your content on a website, or any portal that accepts iFrame content. The only people that will be able to view this embedded content are those that already have been granted access to it via the App. 

 

 Embed in SharePoint Online

Get a link to securely embed your content in SharePoint Online. This method is the same as the above 'Embed' option. The only difference is that the link is optomised for use in your SharePoint Site. Your users will need to have access to the SharePoint Site and the Power BI App to view this data.

 

Publish to Web

The 'Publish to Web' feature creates an anonymous embed code that is not secured to specific users. As it is used to embed content anonymously, it is therefore considered a security risk. If you want to embed content to share within your own team, the 'Embed' or 'Embed to SharePoint' options must be used instead. The Publish to Web feature is not enabled by default. Should you require this feature we will need to confirm the following:

  • That your content is not stored on your personal Workspace (you may need a Power BI Pro Licence to create a non personal 'Shared Workspace')
  • The audience for your report / content
  • You agree that this data can be published anonymously
  • That there is no sensitive or personal data that will be exposed in your report / content
  • That you are responsible for the data in your reports / content
  • That you have read and comply with the Computing Regulations