The Developer’s Guide to

Power BI Embedded
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 2

Your guide to using Power BI Embedded will briefly cover a few prerequisites,
and will then look at five steps to complete:

Start building fully 1. Set up your development environment

interactive reports
and dashboards into
2. Set up your Power BI environment
your application, 3. Create and publish content
website, or portal.
4. Embed your content for testing
5. Move to production

If you’re not ready to start today, get familiar with Power BI Embedded in the Power BI Embedded Playground.
Try out all the front-end features you can offer customers with pre-configured visuals and data models.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 3

What is Power BI Embedded?

Power BI Embedded allows you to white label Microsoft Power BI to quickly and easily provide
engaging front-end analytics and dashboards to your customers.

Save time and expense by embedding Give your customers high-fidelity, Choose from a broad range of
fully interactive reports and dashboards interactive analytics across any data visualizations or build your
into applications, websites, and portals. device. own custom illustrations.

Power BI Embedded also includes an extensive library of data connectors, APIs, and fully-documented SDKs. Choose the right set of options for
your application and customers, whether you need basic data visualizations or complex interactive analytics.

The Prerequisites:
Complete these prerequisites to get started:
• Open an Azure subscription. Create a free account.
• Set up your own Azure Active Directory tenant.
• Install Visual Studio (version 2015 or later).
Optional, but recommended:
• Obtain a Power BI Pro license. Start a free trial.

Once you’ve finished, you’re just five easy steps away from providing a better and more engaging customer product.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 4

Power BI Embedded:

Step 1 Set Up Your Development Environment

First, make sure your development environment allows for
embedding with Power BI.

Register your application with Azure AD to establish an

identity for your app and enable it to access the Power BI
REST APIs

Step 2 Create a Power BI workspace

You must place your content within a created Power BI
app workspace to embed reports, dashboards, or tiles
for your customers.

Follow these step-by-step instructions to set up your

Power BI environment and app workspaces, as there
are several configuration options available. Enable
workspace access for your Azure AD app by adding
the service principle or master user, as a member or
admin to the workspace.
Optionally, to get started quickly use our embedding set up tool.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 5

Power BI Embedded:

Step 3
Create and Publish Content
Connect to, transform, and visualize your data with Power BI Desktop, a free authoring tool used to create your embedded
visual artifacts. Connect it to data sources to create data models and build visuals that you can share as reports.

Use Power BI Desktop to:

- Connect to data.
- Create a data model by transforming and cleaning that data.
- Turn your data into visual representations like charts and graphs.
- Collect those visuals into reports.
- Publish the reports to your Power BI app workspace.

There are many different types of visuals available when you create or edit a Power BI report. When you download Power BI
Desktop or open Power BI service, there is a set of Power Bi visuals available out of the box. But, you aren’t limited to this set –
you can also choose from a library of visuals or even build your own custom Power BI visual.

If you need help connecting and modeling data or creative visualizations, our network of partners is available to assist you.

Once you’ve created your visuals and published them to your app workspace, you’re ready to embed.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 6

Quick reference guide to the Power BI REST APIs

Power BI Embedded:
OPERATION GROUP DESCRIPTION

Step 4
Admin Operations for working with administrative tasks
Embed Your Content for Testing
Embed your content within your application with Available features Operations that return available features
the Power BI REST APIs using “app owns the
data” options, or through .NET SDK. Capacities Operations for working with capacities

Embedding within your application requires an Dashboards Operations for working with dashboards
access token for your master account from
Azure Active Directory (AAD). Datasets Operations for working with datasets

Embed token Operations for working with embed tokens

You must get an Azure AD access token for your
Power BI application before you make calls to
Gateways Operations for working with gateways
the Power BI REST APIs.
Groups Operations for working with groups
Follow these steps to create your Power BI Client
access token, get the content you want to Imports Operations for working with imports
embed, and create your embed token.
Push datasets Operations for working with push datasets
Use this guide to embed your content using
a sample application. Reports Operations for working with reports

Power BI Embedded Azure Operations for managing Azure resources

Enhance the embedded experience by optionally
Resource Manager REST API
using the client APIs to programmatically control
the Power BI content.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 7

Power BI Embedded:

Step 5 Move to Production

Acquire a dedicated capacity
Now that you’ve developed your application, you’ll
need capacity within the Microsoft Azure portal to
back your workspace. By creating a capacity, you can
take advantage of having resources for your
customers

Create and assign an app workspace

to your dedicated capacity.

Use this guide in the Azure portal for details on how

to create a Power BI Embedded capacity.

Once you create a dedicated capacity,

follow these steps to assign your app workspace to it.
5 Step Guide to Using Power BI Embedded 8

Power BI Embedded: Conclusion

With all five steps completed, you now have an easy way to build analytics into your application, website, or portal
without having to develop and maintain them yourself. Provide fully interactive visuals to your customers to quickly
respond to their requirements and expand your product offering.

Power BI Embedded
Customer Testimonials What’s New Developer Center
Playground
Try out front-end features of See who else is using Power BI Keep up to date with Power BI Learn more about Power BI
Power BI Embedded without Embedded and why. View stories Embedded’s latest features and build options: customize,
writing code or creating visuals. from companies like EY, MPS capabilities, or check out the extend, and embed in
Copy sample code to make your Monitor, Integris Health, developer blog for tips and applications using our
own development even easier. Chamberlain Group, and more. tricks. comprehensive set of APIs and
fully-documented SDK libraries.

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