How to Embed Analytics With Power BI - Basic & Advanced

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In parts one and two of our embedded analytics blog series, we focused on defining this new type of business intelligence (BI) and helped provide information on the types of organizations that are finding value in the technology.  This article will discuss the different levels at which data can be integrated into your native products and provide details on how to embed analytics with Power BI. 

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What are the different types of embedded analytics? 

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Embedded analytics is an umbrella term for integrating BI into a website, portal, or application that does not have native reporting capabilities.  While there are many ways for analytics to be embedded, most implementations can be classified as either basic or advanced. 

Basic

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A basic embedded analytics implementation typically renders reports on websites using HTML and iFrames.  This is the most common approach that allows adopters to integrate visualizations into websites without the software engineering resources needed to embed via APIs, software development toolkits (SDKs), and authorization components.  Simply put, many reports have an embed code that can be copied and pasted to display your report in an embed fashion. 

Common Use Cases: 

• Websites/Blog Posts

Benefits: 

• Little to no software engineering (copy/paste)
• Embedded reports that help end-users visualize data

Cons: 

• No data permissions or limiting of content between users
• End-user cannot filter or change rendered data
• Data is cached and not rendered via real-time computation

How to implement basic embedded analytics with Power BI: 

1. Navigate to the report in a workspace and select File > Embed Report > Publish to web (public)

2. A dialogue box will appear with an option to create a code for the report at hand. Select ‘Create Embed Code’:

3. Review a warning about public content and confirm the report can be published:

4. Copy and paste the embed code or HTML provided to publicly embed the report for your specific use case:

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Advanced:

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Advanced embedded analytics consist of technical implementations that utilize APIs and SDKs to embed a software-as-a-service (SaaS) BI application into an organization’s existing product(s). This type of embedding requires many technical components that enable two-way communication between applications.

Common Use Cases: 

• SaaS vendors looking to offer reporting within their native application

Benefits: 

• Comprehensive analytics located within an organization's existing product
• Dashboards can be rendered, filtered, and updated by the end-user in real-time or near-real time depending on the backend resources used to aggregate the data
• Row-level permissioning of data & authorization of users as they log-in 
• BI functionality is accessible to users that do not have a login to a BI product 

Cons: 

• Requires technical teams, project planning, and software engineering
• Higher costs to implement and maintain 
• Technical interdependencies between multiple applications can lead to more complicated troubleshooting/issue resolution 

How can I implement advanced embedded analytics with Power BI? 

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There are several approaches to consider when embedding Power BI in your native product but the exact implementation will depend on your organization's requirements.  Generally speaking, you will need:

1. At least one Power BI pro license considered a “Master Account”
2. An app workspace for embedded content with your “Master Account” as its administrator
3. Capacity to compute and render embedded content. Power BI embedded capacity can be purchased inside of Azure.
   

Embedding Power BI into your application will require software engineering, but there are many existing tools that can be leveraged during your implementation:

• Power BI REST APIs: These are the main APIs with which you will interact and develop against. 
• Power BI .NET SDK: A downloadable NuGet package for applications that utilize .NET.  This implementation can help wrap and manage calls being made to the Power BI REST APIs. 
• Power BI JavaScript SDK: This provides client-facing functionality that helps end-users interact with and filter reports in a way that feels native to your application. 
  

Detailed instruction is available in Power BI’s technical documentation directory. 

This is part three of our embed series. In part four, we’ll take a look at some real-life examples of basic and advanced embedded analytics and explore use cases in further detail. 

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If you decide to embed analytics with Power BI, then performance will be of utmost importance. Check out our video on Enhancing Report Performance in Power BI to ensure you follow best practices and help to prevent Power BI from slowing your reports down.

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