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Adding Power BI Reports

Administrator

Once your Tenant is connected to your Power BI workspaces via a Service Principal, you can begin linking reports, dashboards, and apps for your users to view.

1. Prerequisites​

Before adding a report, ensure:

  1. The Power BI Service Principal has been added as a Member or Admin to the target workspace in the Power BI Service.
  2. The workspace is visible in DataCentral under Administration > Power BI Items > Manage Workspaces.

2. Importing an Item​

To add a Power BI item to your Tenant:

  1. Navigate to Administration > Power BI Items.
  2. Click the Add New Item button.
  3. Select the Workspace and then the specific Item you want to import.

The form provides a number of optional fields and settings to configure the item before saving:

  • Name: Defaults to the item's name in Power BI. You can override this with a custom display name shown to your users.
  • Description: A short description displayed alongside the item in the interface.
  • Folder Path: Place the item into a folder to organise your navigation menu.
  • Icon: Assign a custom icon to the item.
  • Feature Toggles: A set of checkboxes to enable specific behaviours for the item.
  • Roles: Assign one or more Report Roles to control which users can see the item. A user without a matching role will not see the item in their navigation.
  • Additional Data: Add references to related datasets or reports that DataCentral needs in order to generate the correct embed token. See Configuring Additional Data Dependencies for details.
  1. Click Save.

Once saved, the item is available in DataCentral and visible to any user or Organizational Unit assigned a matching Role.

3. Configuring Additional Data Dependencies​

Some complex Power BI reports have dependencies on other items in the workspace. DataCentral needs to know about these dependencies to generate the correct embed tokens.

  • Paginated Visuals: If your report contains a paginated report visual, you must add the paginated report's GUID as "Additional Data" (Type: Report).
  • Shared Datasets: If your report connects to a dataset in a different workspace, you must add that dataset's GUID as "Additional Data" (Type: Dataset).
  • Row-Level Security (RLS): If the underlying dataset uses RLS, you must add the dataset's GUID as "Additional Data" and check the Has RLS box. This tells DataCentral to pass the user's RLS roles to Power BI when rendering the report.

To configure dependencies:

  1. Edit the item.
  2. Go to the Additional Data Sources section.
  3. Enter the required GUIDs and check the appropriate boxes.
  4. Click Save.

4. Pinning a Default Landing Page​

You can pin one report as the default landing page for all users in your Tenant. When a user logs in, this report will be the first thing they see.

  1. Navigate to Administration > Power BI Items.
  2. Locate the report you want to pin.
  3. Open its Actions menu.
  4. Select Pin For All.