Currently our client is using Crystal reports (11.x), integrated with the old .Net desktop application.
Looking to move towards better reporting solutions: Dashboards, reports with filters, drill downs, better export options & formatting with excel. Still print reports, needs better printing experience with reports
Client already has SQL license - SSRS reporting services fits most of the requirements, but they need better Dashboards. They like Power BI Dashboards.
Does Power BI can replace SSRS with reports + Dashboards or still need both to complement each other?
If your client absolutely requires printable paginated reports, you'll likely still want to complement Power BI with SSRS. I've also seen this as a pain point for some organizations, but in many cases I am able to work with a client to adopt Power BI as an alternative; one can make the case that paginated reports are not required when you have the ability to drill down and even export row-level data if desired.
In situations where all employees who need to consume the information have access to licensing and technology (even a tablet or phone will do), then you can potentially supplant SSRS/Crystal entirely with Power BI. Your biggest issues are going to be when reports are mass-printed to low-level employees in operational positions, particularly those who don't work on a computer.
This is definitely more of an expectations management conversation and working with the organization to distill down precisely what their requirements are. It can get political, and even if they don't really need paginated, printed reports, some users will insist on them.
Related
Years ago I used a BI product called Hyperion Interactive Reporting. It allowed me to connect to a data source and create data models from which I would create reports. So far, sounds like Power BI right?
It also had the ability to connect to a metadata repository database. This database would contain data that mapped the actual, often cryptic, table and column names in the database to human-readable, business terms. For example a column that I saw in Hyperion as "Cost Center" may have been in the database as costCenter, work_order, or PROJECT-NUMBER. (It would also allow me to define the default join paths, but let's keep this question smaller.) This provided a way to make report development easier.
In Power BI, I see that I can manually rename columns, one-at-a-time. (And each time I touch something minor like this, Power BI takes several seconds to validate the entire file.) But I also see the need for many models that use the same data sources. So I may be defining the "Cost Center" column a few hundred times (a handful of reports per data set to answer a specific type of question, a few data sets that need Cost Center because the transformations in the model will be different for each type of question, several different combinations of data sources that include Cost Center, etc.)
Is there a way to connect Power BI to a metadata repository? Is there a way in Power BI to say, "Across all of my models/datasets, if I'm using the costCenter column from the Financial database, display Cost Center to the user"?
With about 20,000 columns in my data warehouse and 20,000 reports in my current reporting system, this could become a big deal if we intend to migrate to Power BI.
TLDR; There isn't an easy way to achieve this. What you have now is probably better than you could achieve without a ton of work. If you do try it, use SSAS instead of Power BI Desktop to author models.
Does Power BI have a metadata repository? No. There are tools that can get metadata from Power BI models, but you would have to manually build the metadata repository. If you want a centrally managed environment like this, I would highly recommend using SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) for on premise, or even better, Azure SSAS in the cloud. (Azure SSAS will get new features sooner than SSAS installed on premise.) While Power BI Desktop is a great self-service tool, I wouldn't author in it if I needed to control or report across the environment. There just aren't easy ways to corral all of the Power BI models in a report and it's a much more manual process. SSAS will need IT Support and is a higher cost and you will hit more issues than Power BI Desktop, but you will need it if you need central control. It's possible that more management controls will be added to the PowerBI.com service over time, but as of November 2021, you can't do this easily.
So what's the difference between Power BI Desktop and SSAS? The same Power BI engine in Power BI Desktop also exists in SSAS. When you start Power BI Desktop, it's actually starting a SSAS instance behind the scenes. Using SSAS directly just makes it easier for you to connect to the database behind the scenes and see all the models in the environment from one place, while Power BI Desktop doesn't let you peak behind the scenes and it only loads a single model at a time.
How do you get the metadata? It is an easy thing to get SSAS metadata using Power Query (or any SQL tool) to pull Direct Management View (DMV) data. DMVs are management tables that hold all of the metadata of the model, and you just use SQL commands to get the data. Search on "SSAS DMV" to learn more. I have a Excel file that uses Power Query to pull all the key DMV views for all our models in our servers. It makes it easy to do the kind of analysis as in your example.
For Power BI Desktop, you can connect to the hidden SSAS instance and do the same thing, but the report has to be open to do it, and there is no easy way to refresh the data--you pretty much just repeat the process each time. You will connect via localhost:port_number, and the port number is randomly created each time you start Power BI making it impossible to refresh the data pull. There are External Tools such as DAX Studio, Power BI Helper, and dataMarc's Document Model that make that easier, but there's no easy way to automate building the metadata repository for Power BI Desktop files. I would use SSAS directly rather than trying to automate building a large metadata repository.
What about making changes to models? To my knowledge, there aren't any tools that make it easy to make changes across models, though again, you could manually build them. I don't think I would trust my own tool to automate changes across models though. There's just too much that could go wrong. But if you had the need and the budget, you could build it. Look at tools like Tabular Editor, ALM Toolkit, and Microsoft's SSMS, and read on DevOps pipelines for automating updates. These tools work against SSAS and Power BI Desktop, but again, you have to open the Power BI files to work with those models, which makes automation that much harder to do.
Note that all the external tools I've mentioned except Tabular Editor v3 are free (though Tabular Editor v2 is free). PowerBI.tips is a great place to install all these tools from a single installer.
My company is currently building an enterprise data warehouse in SQL server. We are looking at using PowerBI but I'm struggling to see how PowerBI works in the context of a data warehouse.
For instance what would it offer us, other than nicer looking reports, that Cognos, which we are using now, doesn't? How is it at handling immense amounts of data?
In the context of the Enterprise Data Warehouse Power BI has a number of options.
1) It can be the visualisation layer of your SSAS Data Models, users can connect and quickly create reports as it will sit over, not import data to the Power BI Report. Data processing is done on the server side, and can access huge data models/databases
2) Rather than create SSAS Data Models. Power BI can create a semi-semantic layer, as it is a branch of SSAS Tabluar technology. Your users can quickly deploy the reports, based directly on the database. You can use it in Direct Query mode, as with option 1, this sits over the database, and query processing is dome on the server side. You can import data, but it will be limited to 1GB dataset sizes. All report queries are served from the imported dataset, not the server. With Aggregation Mode you can combine import and direct query to sit over large databases
The real benefit is to enable self-service BI, to get the users to create their own reports. So you can mix strategic (built by the business) and tactical reports (user built). Power BI allows a quick process to mix and match data sources, for example data under your organisation domain, Databases, Cubes, Execl file etc, and data not under your domaim, webpages, API's, other sources.
You can also have Power BI on-prem or in the cloud. On-prem will depend on the SQL Server license type, or it will be another cost. Power BI also fully integrates with O365, and Azure so depending on your application/tech stack, that may be a benefit. It also integrates very well with Power Apps, Power Automate so Power Users can build solutions without requests to IT or others.
This is from my personal experience. I have had a number of projects for enterprise scale customers, that have moved from Cognos (And other tech like Tableau), fully or in part, due to the cost and and the integration of Power BI into O365. End users liked the large knowledge base, the support from MS, and the rapid updating/roadmap of the technology. The most common question is, can it replace X tech. The answer is maybe, it will depend on your report requirements, and how it will integrate with your data sources. Other trends I've noticed, moved some work from IT/BI to the Power Users, particularity with Power Apps/Automate functionality.
Power BI is a lightweight ETL and modeling tool, so it is not just a visualisation tool. There are a number of blogs and articles that compare Power BI to Congnos, that seem biased, so it will be tricky to find a objective answer.
I have published an application that i did with power Bi, for some charts I want to make data downloadable for users.
I couldn't find any straight forward way to do that, some sites talk about implementing a script for that.
Is there any real way for published application that works?
One of the limitations of Publish to web is the inability to export data:
Reports using row level security.
Reports using any Live Connection data source, including Analysis Services Tabular hosted on-premises, Analysis Services Multidimensional, and Azure Analysis Services.
Reports shared to you directly or through an organizational content pack.
Reports in a group in which you are not an edit member.
"R" Visuals are not currently supported in Publish to web reports.
Exporting Data from visuals in a report, which has been published to the web
ArcGIS Maps for Power BI visuals.
Reports containing report-level DAX measures.
Single sign-on data query models.
Secure confidential or proprietary information.
The automatic authentication capability provided with the Embed option doesn't work with the Power BI JavaScript API. For the Power BI JavaScript API, use the user owns data approach to embedding. Learn more about user owns data.
Exporting data is possible, if you publish your report in Power BI Online and share it with your colleagues. But keep in mind, that even in this case it may not be possible or allowed, due to these limitations, e.g. if it has been disabled, or the user doesn't have enough permissions. In addition, it has limits on maximum columns, rows and data size.
The best option is to export the data directly from the data source, which is used to build this report.
I have read a little bit about Power BI and it looks like a great tool. I need to provide reports/dashboard in the way that client would see my branding, is it possible? It looks like it works for webpages as you can use the embedded power bi functionality, but what with mobile bi experience. Let's say with the power bi app, is there a way to creat a clone of this application with your own branding and different name (rather than power bi app)? If it doesn't work can i somehow use PowerApps? Can I create my own let's say iphone app using PowerApps which shows reports/dashboards? How does it work with regards to security, can I have 2 factor authentication?
The more complicated scenerio which I really would like to achieve is to a webpage which has 2 pages, one with embedded Power BI and another one with SSRS reports. What is the best way to achieve that? It would be great if a user needs to login to the page only once?
I would appreciate your indications what is possible and what not and how current companies deal with such issues.
Regards,
Rafal
Your best bet is Power BI Embedded. As you say, it allows you to embed Power BI reports into externally facing mobile apps or websites. More information: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/power-bi-embedded-what-is-power-bi-embedded/
To complete your more complicated scenario, you can use the Report Viewer control to embed SSRS reports into a website: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337090.aspx. In terms of logging in, both Power BI Embedded & Report Viewer allow your application to authenticate behind the scenes against their respective services. End user security is left to your app/website to handle.
Re-branding the existing Power BI mobile app is a no-go. It comes as-is.
Power Apps can be used to collect data that is then loaded into Power BI, but I've never heard of Power BI tiles/reports being embedded into a Power App.
All these technologies are rapidly evolving, though. What's true today could easily change as features are added & feedback is received.
What is the difference between the Power BI desktop client and web client. Both seem to have the same features. What can the desktop client do that the web client cannot do?
I'm not going to be exhaustive since there are a ton of features in both experiences. The Power BI Desktop is intended as a tool for Analysts to work with data. It includes data load, mashup, data modeling, and reporting capabilities. You can create models with relationships, calculated columns and DAX measures. You can create crazy transforms to manipulate the data to shape it into as good shape or merge data from multiple sources into a single data model. The web version of reports really focuses on the reporting piece. If someone else is doing all the data modeling for you, then the web reporting UI is pretty comprehensive. If you need to do the data modeling yourself, then Desktop is the way to go. Desktop does have the added benefit of a file you can save or archive. It doesn't support the direct query sources or push data sets like the web report feature. So there are at least some limitations. Which you use really depends on the types of problems you're trying to overcome.