Reporting with Power BI Report Builder

The Microsoft Power BI Report Builder is a desktop tool for classic standard reporting. The tool can be used to create and distribute pixel-perfect, printable reports (known as paginated reports).

What are Power BI Reports?

Power BI Reports are detailed reports generated using Microsoft's Power BI tool. They provide insights into various business departments by visualizing large datasets, making the information easier to understand and useful for management decisions.

Features of Power BI Reports

  • Interactive Analysis: Power BI Reports allow for interactive data analysis and visualization.

  • Customizable: Reports can be customized to meet specific business needs.

  • Integrated Data Sources: Supports data from multiple sources, including Excel and SQL databases.

  • User-Friendly: Easy to create, share, and collaborate on reports within an organization.

Architecture Power BI Builder

Power Bi Builder Architektur

 

The differences between Power BI reports and paginated reports

A paginated report (.rdl) automatically produces enough pages to map every row in the table. Power BI reports (.pbix) do not offer this option. If such a report has a table integrated into it, a certain number of rows will appear to fit the available space on the page. A scrollbar can be used to view the additional rows. However, if this page is printed or exported as a PDF file, only the rows that were visible on the page are shown.

  • Dynamic, analysable power BI report

    Dynamisch analysierbarer Power BI-Bericht

  • Paginated report in power BI service

    Paginierter Bericht im Power BI-Service

  •  Power BI report (.pbix)Paginated report(.rdl)
    LogoPower Bi Berichte LogoPower BI paginierte Berichte Logo
    Use Cases
    • Explorative and interactive data analysis
    • Modern graphical presentation of analytical reports
    • Analysis of correlations
    • Classic standard reporting
    • Printable and PDF reports
    • Graphic and tabular presentation of data
    • Answering of recurrent questions
    Report structureFreely designablePaginated (per page)
    formatting
    DevelopmentPower BI DesktopPower BI Report Builder
    PublicationPower BI-ServicePower BI-Service
    DistributionSubscriptions, power automats, manual exportSubscriptions, power automats, manual export
    FormatsPDF, PowerPoint, image filesExcel, PDF, PowerPoint, Word, CSV, XML

     

Impressions Power BI Report Builder

  • Power BI Report Builder
  • Power BI Report Builder

Use cases paginated reports

Paginated reports are suitable whenever highly formatted, pixel-precise reports need to be printed or provided as PDFs, for example for

  • Annual financial statements
  • dPrinting forms and invoices
  • Recurring structured reports for shipping
  • Statistical datasets

Power BI Report Builder Paginierte Berichte

Advantages of paginated reports

Companies benefit from the report format in several ways:

  • Print-ready: paginated reports are optimised for printing or PDF creation. If necessary, data areas can be expanded and overflow over multiple pages in a controlled manner. Your report layouts can define margins and headers and footers.

  • Render formats: Power BI can render paginated reports in a variety of formats. Formats include Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, PDF, CSV, XML, and MHTML. (The MHTML format is used by the Power BI service to render reports.) Your report users can choose to export in the format that works for them.

  • Precision layout: You can design highly formatted, pixel-perfect layouts – In the exact size and at the location that can be configured to within a fraction of an inch or centimetre.

  • Dynamic Layout: You can create highly responsive layouts by setting many report properties to use VB.NET expressions. Expressions have access to many core .NET framework libraries.

How paginated reports work

Funktionsweise paginierter Berichte

 

The data to be displayed in tabular form can be grouped according to the purpose of the evaluation and supplemented by totals columns and rows for aggregations. Parameters can be defined that allow the report consumer to retrieve the desired volume of data. The data to be evaluated is displayed in the desired granularity in detail rows, and the report design adapts dynamically. This ensures a consistent layout that can span multiple pages if required.

Develop and publish paginated reports

  • In the course of designing a paginated report, the report creator defines what data should be retrieved, where it can be retrieved, and how it should be displayed.

  • When the report is executed, the report processor uses the specified report definition, retrieves the data, and combines it with the report layout to generate the report.

  • It is available in the report generator for preview of the report to check the appearance.

  • Then the paginated report can be published in Power BI and a work report assigned.

Prerequisites

  • The Power BI Report Builder can be downloaded free from the Microsoft Download Centre.

  • To publish a report in the service, a Power BI Pro licence or a Power BI Premium licence is required.

  • Publish and share paginated reports under My Workspace or in other workspaces as long as the workspace is in a Power BI Premium capacity and the user has write access to the workspace.

  • For a Premium Gen1 capacity, a Power BI administrator must enable paginated reports in the Premium Capacities section of the Power BI Administrator Portal. For a Premium Gen2 capacity, paginated reports are automatically enabled.

Licence models

For more information about licensing options, please feel free to contact us.

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Supported data sources

A number of data sources are natively supported by paginated reports

  • DATA SOURCE

    Azure Analysis Services

    AUTHENTICATION

    SSO, OAuth2

    NOTIFICATIONS

    The AAS firewall must be disabled or configured to allow all IP address ranges in the BlackForest region. This only applies to the BlackForest region. Single sign-on from an external client is not supported.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Azure SQL-Databank Azure SQL Data Warehouse

    AUTHENTIFIZIERUNG

    Basic, single sign on (SSO) OAuth2

    NOTIFICATIONS

    An enterprise gateway with Azure SQL database can be used. SSO cannot be used to authenticate in such scenarios.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Managed Azure SQL database instance

    AUTHENTICATION

    Standard

    NOTIFICATIONS

    Via a public or a private endpoint. A private endpoint must be routed through an enterprise gateway.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Power BI-Dataset

    AUTHENTICATION

    SSO

    NOTIFICATIONS

    Read permission is required for Power BI premium datasets and Power BI non-premium datasets. Only Power BI datasets in import mode and DirectQuery mode are supported.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Premium-Power BI-Dataset (XMLA)

    AUTHENTICATION

    SSO

    NOTIFICATIONS

    Power BI datasets are not supported as data sources for embedded paginated reports in scenarios where the app owns the data. Ensure that the Do not use credentials option is selected when setting the data source to ensure proper connectivity in Power BI Report Builder.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Enter data

    AUTHENTICATION

    N/V

    NOTIFICATIONS

    Data are embedded in report.

  • DATA SOURCE

    Dataverse

    AUTHENTICATION

    SSO, OAuth2

    NOTIFICATIONS

    The use of a gateway as a multi-level authentication (MFA) is not supported.

There is the additional option of accessing the following data sources via a Power BI Enterprise-Gateway:

  • SQL Server (supports SSO)
  • SQL Server Analysis Services
  • Oracle (supports SSO)
  • Teradata
  • ODBC