Getting Started
Creating a new playlist on PowerBI Robots
1- General:
To schedule automatic screenshots with PowerBI Robots, go to the web agent and click “Playlist” on the side menu. From here, you will be able to create new automation playlists, as well as search and access previous ones.
To start a new automation playlist, click the “Create” button. On the first tab (“General”), name the playlist, and choose the screenshot output format (image, single or multiple PDFs, single or multiple Excel files). Then, set the screen-capture recurrence (i.e. your data’s refresh rate) and how you want your data delivered (“Send to”).
Currently, PowerBI Robots supports the following delivery methods:
Email: deliver your Power BI reports and dashboards as high screen images or PDFs by email. Send to as many recipients as you wish by adding them in the “Recipients” tab. Fill in the subject and email message in the “General” tab.
File System: send your Power BI reports and dashboards as high-definition screenshots or PDFs to a file system. You must enter the path to it in the “Recipients” tab.
SharePoint: send your Power BI reports and dashboards as high screen images or PDFs to a SharePoint library. Enter the SharePoint library URL and Listname on the “Recipients” tab.
Slideshow: display your Power BI reports and dashboards as high screen images on any web browser. If you choose Slideshow as your delivery method, you don’t need to fill in any recipients. PowerBI Robots generates a URL you can use on any web browser to watch your playlist.
2- Recipients:
After choosing your sending method, click the “Recipients” tab to fill in your data recipients:
Keep in mind that this tab is only available when you select Email, SharePoint, or File System as your delivery method. Since one of PowerBI Robots‘ biggest advantages is the ability to share PowerBI reports with people outside your organization, you may add any emails or SharePoint libraries to your recipients. Just make sure you have the proper authorization to do it.
You can add new columns next to the mandatory name and email fields. Each new category will be available as a token wherever it can be used.
3- Adding Power BI reports, dashboards, and visuals to your playlist
Once you’re done, click “next” and proceed to the “Visuals” tab. Click “Add Power BI account” and a screen displaying your Power BI workspaces will pop up. You may see all reports and dashboards contained on each by clicking the plus sign. Check the boxes to select which report pages and individual tiles you wish to send (alternatively, select them all). Select which data you wish to send and what filters you want to apply.
All selected dashboards and reports are displayed on the left of the screen, under the “Search” bar. You can change the title, set the size, and apply report and page-level filters to any reports by clicking the icon next to each PBI URL field. After selecting the Power BI dashboards and reports to add to your playlist, click “Create” to finish creating your playlist.
If, instead of creating a new playlist from scratch, you wish to duplicate one, click the Actions button from the Playlists screen and select Duplicate from the dropdown menu.
A playlist copy keeps all elements from the original one, including reports, recipients, and filters. Keep this in mind when creating playlists using this method.
You must now install and configure the PowerBI Robots agent to synchronize your playlists.
4- Downloading, Installing, and Configuring the PowerBI Robots desktop agent
After setting up your playlists, you must install and configure the PowerBI Robots desktop agent and start the service. If you don’t do it, PowerBI Robots simply won’t work. This agent sets things up and synchronizes your playlists. It does not collect any information – everything is stored locally, on the user’s infrastructure. You can download the PowerBI Robots desktop agent on the web agent or by clicking this link.
After downloading the PowerBI Robots desktop agent, extract the file, click it, and follow the steps in the installer. When the installation process is over, open PowerBI Robots Config, and follow these steps:
On the “General” tab:
Add your PowerBI Robots account ID (you can find it on the top right corner of the web agent) and click “Synchronize”.
Log in to your Microsoft® Power BI™ Account.
Check the Service Configuration.
If you wish to, you can also test your playlists here. Click the “Test PBIRobots Playlist Execution” button, and the following window will pop up:
On the “Providers” tab:
If you’re using an SMTP service to send your reports by email or are sending them to a SharePoint library, this is where you configure them. If you don’t have the necessary information, please ask your IT manager.
To use your Office 365 account, you can use the dedicated Login button or fill in the SMTP Username and Password.
If you wish to use your Gmail account, you can can do the same thing, by selecting the correct Email Provider.
On the “Service” tab:
You can choose between using a built-in Local System user or a Specific user. For the latter, make sure that the specified user has read and write permissions to the installation folder (by default, C: ProgramFiles/DevScope/PBIRobots).
Your PowerBI Robots agent’s configuration is now complete! Your playlists can now be sent.
Save all changes and close PowerBI Robots Config.
Personalizing a playlist on PowerBI Robots
One of PowerBI Robots’ advantages is the ability to send different data to different recipients from the same Power BI.
As an example of how to use this function, we will use a retail chain scenario.
Let’s imagine you’re the general manager and need to send the “Annual Sales Report” to 3 of your stores. However, you don’t want to show each store manager how well their counterparts did. To do so, select the “Visuals” tab, connect your Power BI account and select the reports and dashboards you wish to send. This is where we would gather our total sales data. Add whatever reports and dashboards you wish and hit the close button.
From here, you can apply page-level filters to the reports by clicking the filter icon on each. All recipients will receive the same data filtered this way unless you make some changes in the next tab.
From here, you can apply page-level filters to the reports by clicking the filter icon on each. All recipients will receive the same data filtered this way unless you make some changes in the next tab.
On the “Filters” tab, you can further personalize your data by setting additional filters for each recipient of your reports. This is where we filter your “Annual Sales” data according to each store so each manager won’t be able to access the others’ results.
To filter data individually, firstly select a report under the search bar on the left. Then, click the filter icon alongside that data’s recipient, on the right. Apply any filters as you see fit.
Although dashboards can’t be changed, you can fully personalize your Power BI reports by selecting which data is shown to each recipient.
Integrated Login into PowerBI
Our solution only works after a correct login to your Power BI account. To do so click on the “Add Power BI Visual” button and authenticate with your PowerBI credentials to continue. After signing in, you should be ready to start using PowerBI Robots and add Power BI DashBoards or/and reports into your playlist.
Add Power BI Visuals
You can easily embed visuals, dashboards and report pages into playlists by following the next steps
Click the Add Power BI Visuals button
A new window will open where you can navigate through you PowerBI items and once you select any item you will see a preview of that tile or report.
If you select any report, you will get access to all pages of that report and you can select them individually.
To add an item:
Check the respective checkbox
Click the "Add" button
Filter Reports and Pages
PowerBI Robots allows you to filter your visuals using report and page filters. After this, all updates will consider any filter changes.
To create a filtered version:
Expand the Filters Pane while viewing the report.
Set/Select the filter criteria that you desire
PowerBI Robots will detect the changes and set a filter icon on the node.
Last updated