Microsoft Power BI Embedded (PBIE) allows application developers to embed stunning, fully interactive reports into their applications without having to build their own data visualizations and controls from scratch.
Microsoft developed Power BI Embedded for Independent Software Vendors who wish to embed visuals into their applications without having to build their own analytics solution. Embedded analytics enables business users to access business data and execute queries against it to generate insights within the application.
Power BI Embedded has benefits for an ISV, their developers, and customers. For example, an ISV can start creating visuals for free with Power BI Desktop. By minimizing visual analytic development efforts, ISVs achieve faster time to market and stand out from competitors with differentiated data experiences. ISVs can also opt to charge a premium for the additional value they create with embedded analytics.
How does Power BI Embedded improve the experience for ISVs’ customers?
For ISVs, their customer’s experience is paramount. They need to be able to have ownership over their user control and authentication, without having to contact Microsoft. Users of applications are not identifiable by Azure AD and Power BI Service, Microsoft is not involved in user authentication.
Control over the look and feel of their application environment is also a key concern for ISVs, again this meets that requirement. Embedded Power BI can be personalised with the colours and styling of the embedded analytics by using the themes API. Themes allow ISVs to define their styling and colours so they can be matched to the application or brand colour. With the themes API, ISVs can apply a custom theme during the report load or during a session. We can provide some examples of colour palettes and styles.
Power BI Embedded provides a seamless user experience. Your application users will not know about the Power BI service. It is fully embedded, so there is no need to sign in to Power BI.
Will implementing Power BI Embedded affect how ISVs understand their users’ behaviours?
Understanding user behaviour is critical, it helps ISVs gain better insight into their application. As ISVs transition to the cloud and start offering applications through a SaaS model, understanding what their customers are using is important. Power BI Embedded provides improved usage reports for Power BI reports in modern workplaces. For example, the report can track open requests (views). Regardless of the client environment – such as direct Power BI, embedded Power BI or Power BI mobile – every user opening a report triggers a ViewReport event. Power BI Activity Log API can be used to get similar information.
Power BI Premium is capacity geared toward enterprises who want a complete BI solution that provides a single view of its organization, partners, customers, and suppliers. Power BI Premium helps your organization make decisions. Power BI Premium is a SaaS product that allows users to consume content through mobile apps, internally developed apps, or at the Power BI portal.
Power BI Embedded is for ISVs who want to embed visuals into their applications. Power BI Embedded helps your customers make decisions because Power BI Embedded is for application developers, customers of that application can consume content stored on Power BI Embedded capacity, including anyone inside or outside the organization. You can’t share Power BI Embedded capacity content through one-click publish to Web or one-click publish to SharePoint.
To use the Power BI Embedded service what Microsoft solutions or services do ISVs require?
Prior to utilizing Power BI Embedded services, ISVs must have an Azure subscription. Following this, the Power BI Embedded capacity can be created. This is done in the Azure portal.
As the users of your applications are not identifiable to Microsoft, unknown to the Azure AD and Power BI Service, the traditional process of purchasing user licences will not work. Instead, this is capacity based. The use of this service is charged through app-owns-data embedding by purchasing a license for dedicated capacity. This capacity translates into Microsoft providing the ISV with a set of resources including memory and the processing cycles to serve up your Power BI content. Dedicated Power BI workplaces are associated with this dedicated capacity. There are various options, or SKUs, for this capacity which we can advise our customers on.
How does an ISV get started with Power BI Embedded?
Spanish Point Technologies is an excellent partner for ISVs interested in Power BI Embedded. Our Data Analytics team is highly experienced in Power BI and Embedding. As I shared, I am proudly part of this team which obtained Gold Competency in Data Analytics as a Microsoft partner this year. We continually develop our knowledge and are ready to work with new customers.
Microsoft provides vital support for our team through documentation, SDKs, Embedding playground, Embedding samples and instructions which cover all aspects of embedding from registering your application with Azure to release to production.
For those ISVs interested in this service, I recommend a proof of concept. This is an excellent way for ISVs to start the journey and prove the technology for their company and business. Spanish Point Technologies can help with creating the reports, maintaining it on the Power BI Service and advising on the Embedding capacity requirements. Reach out to our team to set up a discovery meeting and plan a possible proof of concept.
Want to learn more about Power BI Embedded or how we can help ISVs?
