How to Get Started with Power BI Embedded

BySteve Young Updated on
Setup VSCode for Python and GitHub

Power BI Embedded gives you the ability to include the capabilities of Power BI while hosting the reports in your application. This post will provide an introduction and a curated set of resources to develop analytic solutions within your applications. 

Note: I will use the abbreviation PBEmbedded for Power BI Embedded.

Table Of Contents
  1. Power BI Embedded Analytics
  2. How do we Develop with PBEmbedded?
  3. How to Troubleshoot a PBEmbedded Application?
  4. Where Can I Find Documentation?
  5. Do you need a Power BI License to View embedded reports?
  6. How do you Plan for the Workload? 
  7. The Power BI Embedded Analytics Capacity Planning Tool
  8. How to Use Row-Level Security (RLS)
  9. Conclusion
  10. Tutorials and Resources

Power BI Embedded Analytics

Creating and viewing Power BI reports in your applications allows you to embed fully interactive reports and visuals into your applications.  Using the available API set, you can brand, create and view reports as if they were native to your application.  Adding the potential of Power BI reporting and analytics, which your customers may already be familiar with, to your application development tool workflow.

There are many benefits to using Power BI Embedded, such as;

  • Leverage the popularity of Power BI in your clients by using it in your application.
  • Security does not have to be created from scratch.
  • Power BI Embedded reports and dashboards are optimized for mobile devices
  • Reduce the required developer resources by automating analytics monitoring, management, and deployment while getting complete control of Power BI features and intelligent analytics.
  • Power BI Embedded integrates with other Microsoft tools like Azure and Dynamics 365, allowing you to access data from your application and other sources.

As pictured below, there are a number of samples, Power BI Playground – Showcases, that show you how embedded analytics can be used to create compelling analytics that can be added to your applications.

The Samples with code that is available in the Playground Showcase

Resources:

The following resources will take you through the introduction to the platform, included in the extensive FAQ that should answer many of the most popular questions about the service.

How do we Develop with PBEmbedded?

You can try the experience using the free Embedded Analytics Playground.  This will provide a hands-on experience with sample code, or you can embed your own report. One of the biggest benefits is the ability to browse the interactive showcase and see real-world examples of how the environment can be used to augment your solution. See Power BI Playground – Learning Center and the Course: Power BI Developer in a Day which includes a 20-video playlist that provides initial training for the product.  

How to Troubleshoot a PBEmbedded Application?

One of the most difficult tasks when implementing 3rd party products in your application is to determine what is going wrong. The key to success is a good debugging toolset and workflow. The link below, Troubleshooting your PBEmbedded analytics application, reviews a number of tools, examples, and procedures to help debug your application.

Another key to performance is being able to monitor your PBEmbedded application. When critical applications and business processes rely on Azure resources, you want to monitor those resources for their availability, performance, and operation. The resource links below walk you through the process, how to set it up, and what to look for.

There are a number of resources and examples of monitoring and troubleshooting below.

Where Can I Find Documentation?

I have worked at Microsoft for 15 years and am most proud of the move to developer documentation and samples. Pictured below are different areas highlighted that can get you started. PBEmbedded analytics documentation – Power BI.

There are many areas related to Power BI, but a great way to start is the Documentation landing page. I find the Tutorials and How-To sections of the documentation provide a great deal of real-world value.

Do you need a Power BI License to View embedded reports?

For creating/editing embedded reports inside your application, the end user of your application does not need a Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license; from Power BI’s point of view, the user isn’t required to be a Power BI user at all. See the site for more detail

It is probably the hardest part to select a Capacity and SKU, as it depends on many factors. Don’t over-provision, but don’t under-provision. You also have the ability, under some SKUs, to autoscale. For information about autoscaling in Embedded Gen 2, see Autoscaling in Embedded Gen 2.

Power BI Embedded is shipped within an SKU.  Each capacity offers a selection of SKUs, and each SKU provides different resource tiers for memory and computing power.  More information can be found in the Capacity and SKUs reference.  There is a great, How to plan capacity for analytics deployment.

The type of SKU you require depends on the solution you wish to deploy, as each development can have its unique requirements. There is a detailed list of workloads in the section on, Configure workloads in a Premium capacity. This document will provide details on which workloads are supported for each tier with guidance on which SKU you may require.

However, for creating/editing embedded reports inside your application, the end-user does not need a Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license as the user isn’t required to be a Power BI user at all.

You need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license or service principal to use REST APIs. To add reports to a Power BI workspace, an analyst needs either a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license or service principal. Check with your representative for exact licensing requirements. See The following link for more information in the FAQ.

Note: For publishing, you’ll need one Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) account.

How do you Plan for the Workload? 

Capacity is a dedicated set of resources reserved for exclusive use. It enables you to publish dashboards, reports, and datasets to users without having to purchase per-user licenses. It also offers dependable, consistent performance for your content.

Calculating what type of capacity is needed for the deployment needs to take into account multiple parameters. The issue may face is that they can be hard to predict, especially for new developments without a track record of the workload.

Some of the things to take into consideration when planning your capacity are:

  • The data models you’re using
  • The number and complexity of required queries
  • The hourly distribution of the usage of your application
  • Data refresh rates
  • Additional usage patterns that are hard to predict.

Note: When moving to production, PBEmbedded analytics requires a capacity (A, EM, or P SKU) for publishing embedded Power BI content.

For more information, see the full article on PBEmbedded analytics capacity planning – Power BI | Microsoft Docs.

The Power BI Embedded Analytics Capacity Planning Tool

A PowerShell tool can be used, which is available on GitHub; PowerBI-Tools-For-Capacities/LoadTestingPowerShellTool · GitHub that can assist with load testing.

The tool is used to create automated load tests against your capacities and lets you choose which report to test and how many concurrent users to simulate. The tool generates load on a capacity by continuously rendering each report with new filter values to prevent unrealistically good performance due to report caching.

How to Use Row-Level Security (RLS)

As in SQL and Power BI desktops, Row-level security (RLS) can be used to restrict user access to data within dashboards, tiles, reports, and datasets. Different users can work with those same artifacts, all while seeing different data.

This can be more difficult when you are developing an application. The good news I that embedding supports Row-level Security!! If you’re embedding for non-Power BI users (app owns data), which is typically an ISV scenario, then this article will help.

There’s an example of authoring RLS and then consuming that within an embedded application. Our example uses the Retail Analysis Sample, which is referenced in the source below.

Conclusion

I hope this has been a useful guide as you start looking at PBEmbedded as part of your solution flow.

Tutorials and Resources

FAQ

Q. Can you explain what Power BI Embedded is?
Power BI Embedded is a cloud-based data visualization tool enabling developers to integrate Power BI reports and dashboards into their applications, websites, or portals.

Q. What is the difference between Power BI and Power BI Embedded?
Power BI is a data visualization tool used for creating reports and dashboards. Power BI Embedded caters to developers who aim to integrate Power BI reports and dashboards in their portals, websites, or applications.

Q. What are the benefits of using Power BI Embedded?
Power BI Embedded offers a range of advantages, such as scalability, customization, real-time data access, user-friendliness, security, collaboration, mobile support, cost-effectiveness, and integration with other Microsoft tools.

Q. Can I use my own data sources with Power BI Embedded?
Power BI Embedded allows users to connect to a variety of data sources, such as SQL Server, Oracle, and Excel, as well as others.

Q. Is Power BI Embedded a standalone product?
Power BI Embedded is considered a SKU of Power BI and can be accessed through Azure services. It is important to note that a Power BI license is required in order to utilize Power BI Embedded.

Q. What types of applications can I embed Power BI reports and dashboards in?
Power BI reports, and dashboards can be embedded in a variety of applications, such as web applications, mobile applications, SharePoint, and other portals.

Q. Is Power BI Embedded secure?
Remember that Security is a team sport!!  Power BI Embedded offers security measures to safeguard your data, even when embedded in your application. You have the option to configure security at the report, dashboard, or data source level to control access and restrict unauthorized use.

Q. Can I embed Power BI reports and dashboards in my own website?
You can embed Power BI reports and dashboards in your website using the Power BI Embedded JavaScript API. 
There is also a feature in native Power BI to publish a report on the web.  Important to remember that you can publish to the web natively from the Power BI service.  Be careful, though; when you use Publish to Web, anyone on the Internet can view your published report or visual. Viewing requires no authentication.

Q. Is Power BI Embedded suitable for small businesses?
Power BI Embedded can be a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes that need to embed reports and dashboards within their applications. However, it may be more suitable for larger businesses with more complex data needs.

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With over 34 years of experience in the data and technology industry, the last 16 with Microsoft, I have had the opportunity to work in various capacities, contributing to my knowledge and expertise in Data Engineering, Power BI, and Data Visualization.