How to integrate Power BI visuals into PowerApps

PowerApps is the perfect compliment to Power BI in that it makes it very easy to update or add data to the underlying datasets that Power BI is Visualizing. 

This walk through is using the Dashboard in a day sample data that can be found here: https://aka.ms/DIAD     To make it easier i am starting with the finished version of the report

Step 1. Open the Dashboard in a Day finished report

In PowerBi.com login and select Get Data > Files and navigate to where you downloaded and extracted the Dashboard in a Day samples.  In this example i am using a workspace called “Difinity”;  as the intent is to share this PowerApps application, you would not want do this from “My Workspace”

 Step 2.  Pin a visual from the Power BI report to a Dashboard

As the PowerApps Power BI control only supports visuals in Dashboards, we need to pin one of the visuals to a dashboard, in this case I am creating a new one called “PATutorial”.

Step 3.  Create a Canvas based PowerApp

Step 4. Insert a Power BI Control

From the insert ribbon choose controls and scroll to the Power BI Tile

Step 5. Setup the Power BI Control

Step 6.  Add some buttons to set the filter context

On the Insert ribbon select controls and add a couple (~three) buttons.  Change their Text to that of the
manufacturers in the Dash board in a day sample i.e. VanArsdel, Natura and Prium.

Step 7. Create and set a variable to used as our filter context

In the OnSelect of each button set a variable to the manufacture name.  In this example we are hard coding the values rather than using the Button1.Text property to make it easier to include the needed single quotes around the manufacturer name.

Set(MyManufacture,”‘VanArdel'”)

Step 8. Set the TileURL property of the Power BI Control

Select the Power BI control and scroll to the TileURL property then add the section in purple below.  If your buttons don’t work there is a good chance you have added an extra space in the URL and the filter is being ignored.

“HTTPS://APP.POWERBI.COM/EMBED?DASHBOARDID=18AAEA96-CC77-45D6-BC72-19876656C513&TILEID=1FF09934-DB7E-... &$filter=Manufacturer/Name eq ” & MyManufacture

Congrats you have now created a PowerApp that is hosting a Power BI Tile!

Some notes with this example:

If you are looking at the Power BI documentation note there are differences!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-url-filters

1. myvar should start with “&” instead of “?” (because there are other URL params ahead of it)
2. “filter” should be “$filter” (unlike in Power BI directly)

The Tile URL may look something like the following:

https://app.powerbi.com/embed?dashboardId=225c9a6a-86e9-4982-a720-5aa1132d0ff2&tileId=dc9b4418-1b31-...” & myvar

and your Button OnSelect would have something like the following:

Set(myvar, "&$filter=Store/Territory eq 'NC'")

To watch a video of this from end to end please see: 

https://youtu.be/SIEPhRzdY7M