Registering application for Power BI

Power BI is cloud-based business analytics service that enables anyone to visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding. It connects users to a broad range of data through easy-to-use dashboards and interactive reports.

Power BI Services (or Power BI Report Server in the cloud) – cloud-based platform (hosted on Azure) for storing, managing and viewing Power BI reports, dashboards, datasets and workspaces.

Power BI apps are integrated with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to provide secure sign in and authorization for the application that is consuming the reports. To integrate a Power BI app with Azure AD, application details has to be registered by using the Azure Management Portal.

Follow the steps to register application with Azure Active directory for Power BI:

1. First step is to register the application within Azure Active Directory (AAD) on the following link https://dev.powerbi.com/apps . When you register an app in Azure Active Directory, the application outsources authentication to Azure AD. App registration involves telling Azure AD about your application including the URL where it is located, the URL to send replies after authentication, and the URI to identify your application. When you register a client app in Azure AD, you give your app access to the Power BI REST API.
   
   
   For Application Type select Server side web application.
   For Home Page URL and Redirect URL set dummy value. Later this can be edited in Azure portal.
   In the last step of this process Client ID is been created. These credentials are used as input variables for the Power BI API calls.
   If any changes are needed regarding registered application settings they can be done on https://aad.portal.azure.com
   

2. Open Azure portal https://aad.portal.azure.com/

3. Go to Azure Active Directory tab

4. Open app registration

5. Click on the application name that you have registered in step 1.

Open API permissions Tab and add following permissions and then grant admin consent:

Configuring Power BI reports

Power BI - Master User

A master User is an actual Power BI account with a username and password that the Reporting Portal will use to connect to the Power BI API. The master account must be granted with a Power BI Pro license as well as access to the workspace.

Name – Reporting source name Description – Source description Site name – Site name User Identity – Master account User – Azure Active Directory User Password – Azure Active Directory Password Azure Active Directory App Id – Application Id Azure Active Directory Tenant Specific Authority URL – Azure Active Directory Tenant Specific Authority URL Power BI API URL – Power BI API URI to the Power BI resources to be authorized - URI to the Power BI resources to be authorized

Power BI - Service principle

Service principal is a local representation of your AAD application for use in a specific tenant and will allow Reporting Portal to access resources or perform operations using Power BI API without the need for a user to sign in or have a Power BI Pro license.  

Name – Reporting source name Description – Source description Site name – Site name User Identity – Service Principle Azure Active Directory App Id – Application Id Azure Active Directory Tenant Specific Authority URL – Azure Active Directory Tenant Specific Authority URL Azure Active Directory Application Secret – Azure Active Directory Application Secret Power BI API URL – Power BI API URI to the Power BI resources to be authorized - URI to the Power BI resources to be authorized

*Check connection button will show notification if credentials are valid and connection is successful or error message if connection is not established

Note: When registering Power BI reporting source in Reporting configuration, the Power BI user account that will be set for the reporting source, must be linked with Power BI PRO license.