Power BI report templates for dashboards

The Power BI report template feature allows you to create compelling reports populated with data from Adobe Experience Platform. The streamlined installation process automatically installs standard widgets for Real-Time Customer Profile, segmentation, and destinations. The installation also connects Power BI to your data models so you can easily customize and extend your report templates. These reports can be shared across your entire organization without the recipients needing credentials for your organization on Platform.

This document provides instructions on how to connect Adobe Experience Platform with the Power BI application and use report templates to share key Platform data insights with external users.

Getting started

Before continuing with this tutorial it is recommended to have a good understanding of schema composition in Experience Platform, and how attributes are included in Real-Time Customer Profile through the union schema.

To install the Power BI application integration, users must first have acquired the following Platform permissions:

To learn how to assign these permissions, please read the access control documentation.

You must also have a Power BI account to follow this tutorial. To create an account, navigate to the Power BI homepage and follow the sign-up process. Users for this Power BI account must also enable the Create workspace setting within their Power BI settings. This setting is found within the tenant settings of the Power BI admin portal. If your account is provided by your tenant or employer, contact your respective admin to enable this setting.

Install the Power BI application integration

Within the Platform UI, select Dashboards in the left navigation to open the Dashboards workspace. The Browse tab displays a list of currently available dashboard views. To learn more about viewing available dashboards, see the inventory documentation.

Next, select the Integrations tab. The Power BI application integration page appears. From here, select Install to begin the installation.

Provide credentials

The first step in the installation process is to provide non-expiring credentials for the Power BI application integration. There are two options available to provide these: Create new credentials or Use existing credentials. Select the appropriate toggle to continue.

Create new credentials create-new-credentials

There are two required fields when generating new credentials: Name and Assigned to. The Assigned to field relates to the email address associated with your Power BI account.

To learn more about generating non-expiring Query Service credentials, please refer to the non-expiring credentials guide.

After generating non-expiring credentials for the first time, a JSON file is downloaded to that machine. This JSON file can then be shared with other users as credentials to complete the installation process.

Use existing credentials use-existing-credentials

A JSON credential file can also be uploaded to pass validation. These JSON files holding the non-expiring credential values are downloaded to the local machine being used when a non-expiring credential is created.

Select Upload credential file, then select the appropriate JSON file to upload in the dialog that appears.

After you provide the non-expiring credentials, they are automatically validated by Platform. A confirmation message appears once validation is successful. Select Next to review the consent agreement for the Power BI application.

Provide consent

The consent display appears. Select Review consent to open a new window detailing the required permissions for Power BI to access and use your data according to their terms of service and privacy statement.

Select Accept to grant Power BI permission to access and use your Platform data.

After providing consent, the report template is automatically installed in the Power BI environment as part of the installation process. Power BI then uses the non-expiring credentials to access Platform, sequentially execute all the SQL queries, and populate the report template with the returned data.

Select Finish to return to the dashboard inventory.

Now that the Power BI report template is installed, it appears in the list of available dashboards under the Browse tab. Select Power BI from the list to navigate to the Power BI environment.

Power BI workspace

After logging into the Power BI workspace, report templates are available for each of the services to which you have access. The report templates include profiles, segments, and destinations dashboards only if they have the corresponding view permissions.

The standard widgets from profiles, segments, and destinations are available within the Power BI template reports by default.

After a dashboard is installed in Power BI, report templates are displayed to all users by default. If you want to restrict access to any report templates, make sure that you disable access for the users in question from within the Power BI environment.

Customize your Power BI report template

Through the use of custom widgets, you can add custom attributes to your data model to enrich the report templates provided by Power BI.

Create a custom widget

Custom widgets are created through the Widget Library. See the Widget Library overview for an introduction to the feature and the tutorial for creating a custom widget for specific instructions.

Recreate your custom widget in the Power BI environment

Once your dashboard has the appropriate metrics and attributes contained within custom widgets, you are ready to modify the report template displayed from within the Power BI environment. See the Power BI documentation for information on how to edit a report through its user interface.

Delete the Power BI application integration

To delete the dashboard, navigate to the dashboard inventory and select the delete icon ( ) next to the dashboard name.

A confirmation popover appears. Select Delete to confirm the process.

Next steps

By reading this document, you have a better understanding of how Power BI report templates can be integrated into Platform to share compelling data insights from your profiles, segments, or destinations dashboards. See the dashboard customization overview to learn more about customizing your dashboards.