Introducing Power BI in Your Company

Analyst Developer at Banco Popolare
Introducing Power BI in your company
Andrea Martorana Tusa
@bruco441

Introducing Power BI in your
company
Andrea Martorana Tusa
MS Cloud Summit Paris 24/01/2017

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• Developer working in IT department of Banco Popolare. Focused on
all the applications involved in Human Resources management
• Main tasks: SQL Server and Oracle development, data warehousing,
reporting, BI, Analysis Services, C#, R
• MCTS “SQL Server Developer”
• Speaker at SQL Saturdays (Italy, Danmark, Bulgaria, Slovenia), SQL
Nexus, SQL Konferenz, PASS Italian Virtual Chaper, Community Days
• Author on sqlservercentral.com, UGISS (User Group Italiano SQL
Server)
About me | First Name: Andrea Last Name: Martorana Tusa

Agenda
• Why this session ?
• Is Power BI ready for enterprise?
• Power BI enterprise features
• Targeting projects; our development strategy
• Key success factors
• Open issues / missing features

Why this session?
Some facts:
• My company: a group of 8 different banks and 24,000 employees
• My task: implementing a BI environment to provide data and to
produce reports and dashboards. The target ranges from the Head
of Human Resources to the single employee.
• Every user belongs to a population group. Every group has
different profiling rules and personalized visibility levels.
• Everyone can see only what he's allowed to see, depending on his
role into the company.

Why this session?
We are carrying out a project for introducing Power BI in our company. But some questions
immediately arise in order to apply our organizational model to the suite:
• Where is my data? Is the Cloud secure?
• How can we work together to the same project?
• How can we replicate our internal complexity?
• How can we comply with our visibility rules? How to filter data based on logged users?
• How can we deliver our dashboards to a broad number of users?
Power BI comes with some enterprise features to allow developers to publish and deliver their
works. I tried to get into these features to understand whether them are suitable or not for our
needs.
I’m not going to explain what Power BI is. I want to show how you can adopt
Power BI inside your organization and what are the key factors for success.

Is Power BI ready for enterprise?
What we focused on while evaluating Power BI:
Data sources and connections (where is my data?)
Refreshing and scheduling (what frequency is my data updated?)
Data modeling (can I combine, transfom and match data?)
Sharing and deliverying contents.
Either entire workforce or user groups
(how can I spread my reports across the organization?)
Integration with MS Office (can user connect/analyze data with Office Automation tools?)
Mobile (how to deliver contents for smartphone/tablet?)
Security (who can access and see my data?/how to match visibility rules and organizational roles?
Users management and PBI administration (how to manage logins and users?)
Pricing (how much does it cost?)

Pricing Two licenses: Free and Pro.

Power BI Architecture: on-premises vs cloud
On-Premises CloudHybrid
Excel Add-Ins
Power Pivot, Power Query, Power View, Power Map
Power BI Desktop
Power BI Service
(www.powerbi.com)
Power BI Embedded
REST / Javascript API

Data sources and connections
Where is your data?
Cloud
On-premises
Which are your data sources? How do you connect to data?
WWW
Azure (SQL/DW/Spark …)
Online service packs (SaaS)
OneDrive
OData feed
File (txt, csv, xlsx, XML, JSON …)
Databases (SQL Server, Oracle …)
Analysis Services
ODBC connections
R Script
…
Web URLs
Direct Query (Azure)
Data import
Rest APIs
Data import
Direct Query (SSAS)
Live connection

Are you ready for the cloud ?
… probably the answer is NO
For many enterprises moving to the cloud is an obstacle that cannot be
overcome. What feature could be a game changer?

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/it-it/blog/announcing-a-technical-preview-of-power-bi-reports-in-sql-server-reporting-services/
During PASS Summit 2016, has been announced the
forthcoming integration of Power BI reports into Re
porting Services 2016.
This is the last step of the Microsoft’s BI strategy, to
allow user save and deploy Power BI reports on-pre
mises and not on the cloud.
Production release is planned in mid-2017.

Data refreshing and scheduling
Cloud OneDrive
Power BI Service
Rest API
Stream Analytics
Automatic stream
SQL
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
Azure SQL database
Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Azure HDInsight
Power BI Desktop
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
On-premises
Data
source
SASS
Data import
Manual refresh
Connect Live
Data import
Manual refresh
Direct Query
Scheduled
refresh

Cloud OneDrive
Power BI Service
Rest API
Stream Analytics
Automatic stream
SQL
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
Azure SQL database
Azure HDInsight
Power BI Desktop
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
On-premises
Data
source
SASS
Data import
Manual refresh
Connect Live
Data import
Manual refresh
Direct Query
What if you want to establish a live connection with your data on-premises?
You need the on-premises Gateway, a bridge between on-premises data and cloud apps.
The gateway provides quick and secure data transfer through Azure Service Bus. t
On-premises
Gateway

Cloud OneDrive
Power BI Service
Rest API
Stream Analytics
Automatic stream
1M rows/hour
SQL
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
Azure SQL database
Azure HDInsight
Power BI Desktop
Live data sources
Full interactivity
Automatic refresh
On-premises
Data
source
SASS
Data import
Manual refresh
Connect Live
Data import
Manual refresh
Direct Query
On-premises
Gateway
Pro features
Scheduled
Refresh hourly

Data sources, connections and refreshing
Data sources
• Where is most of your data?
• Web or on-premises? What do you want to show?
• If your company is not cloud-oriented rememberd the new feature for
saving reports in SSRS 2016
Connections
• Direct Query works only with SSAS implementations
• For live connections you need a Gateway (Pro feature)
• For Azure live connections you need a Pro license.
Refreshing
• Manual or scheduled? Maybe scheduled ;)
• Frequency depends on your license
What you should pay attention to?

Data modeling
Power BI allows to carry out all the steps of a typical BI process:
ETL
• Data loading
• Data conversion
• Data mash up
• Lookups
Modeling
• Build a data layer
• Define a schema
• Design relationships
• Calculate metrics
Reporting
• Define parameters and slicers
• Define access rule to data
• Design and delivery reports &
Dashboards
Power BI components
• Power Query
• M scripting language
• Power Query
• Power Pivot
• DAX
• Power View / Power BI Desktop
• Power BI Service
• Mobile app

Data modeling
Actually Power BI shouldn’t be considered a replace for an enterprise installation of DW/BI.
Rather it’s a powerful compliment for a well structured solution, allowing user to deliver
analysis and reporting in a easy and straightforward way.
And above all …
No more RECHERCHEV!
RECHERCHEV
Relationship is the key to handle many tables together

Data modeling
Modeling
• Data from SSAS are already related
• Replication of database star schema
• Size
• Removal of unnecessary column
• Denormalization (DAX instructions)
• Creation of calculated column for some measures directly in Power BI (DAX)

Sharing and delivering contents
Power BI collaborative and distribution features:
Sharing
Groups
Content packs
Subscriptions
Publish To Web
Embedding and linking in custom applications (using API)
QR Code
Printing / exporting to PDF

Sharing
You can share a dashboard with people in and out of your
company. Everyone you share it with can see your dashboard
and interact with your reports.
When you share a dashboard, the recipient receive an e-mail
with an invitation.
The recipient must have a Power BI account to access the
dashboard. The license requirements must comply with the
way you build the dashboard (Free or Pro).

PBI Feature
License
Sharing is good for:
Limited ad hoc distribution when your target is individuals or small audience
Sharing one dashboard at time
Giving read-only permissions
Sharing outside the organization

Groups
Groups in Power BI let you and your colleagues together to
collaborate, communicate, and connect with your data.
Groups are based on Office 365. You can create a group in
either Power BI or Office 365 and see it in both environments.
Then invite co-workers into this group workspace where you
can collaborate on your shared dashboards, reports, and
datasets.
Everyone in the group can view, interact with, and edit the
dashboard and its reports.
Groups are available only with Power BI Pro license.

PBI Feature
License
Sharing
Free
Groups are good for:
Team work. For instance IT provides datasets and connections; designers sketch out layout.
Coauthoring contents among different Business Units.
Sharing and versioning data sources on One Drive for Business.
Exploit some Office 365 features for groups, such as conversations, calendar, group
e-mail.

Content packs
Content packs are “containers” that allow developers to keep
together and share all the objects inside Power BI.
You can create a dashboard with its reports and datasets, and then
publish them all as a content pack for your coworkers. When your
colleagues go to the Content Pack Library for your organization,
they can see your content pack and browse it.
Content packs are available only with Power BI Pro license.

Content packs
There are two types of content packs:
- Service content packs, precompiled sets of reports
and dashboards to provide users insights about
common online services such as Salesforce, Microsoft
Dynamics, Google Analytics and so on.
- Organizational content pack, packages created and owned by single developers
for users inside their company.

PBI Feature
License
Sharing
Free
Content packs are good for:
Package up and share your own dashboard, reports, and datasets with your coworkers
Find every content in one location
Team work and coauthoring among different users and BU
Managing contents and updates
Giving permissions and handle access rights to data
Delivery contents to a wide range of users

Subscription
Subscription is the brand new feature for receiving reports directly into your mailbox.
The first preview has been released few days ago, and it’s quite plain.
By subscribing you can only receive a snapshot of report pages you
are interested in. You can subscribe to one report page at time.
The frequency depends on the location of the dataset upon which
the report is based (DirectQuery, Live connection, imported to
Power BI, or Excel file in OneDrive or SharePoint Online) and on the
subscription options available and selected (daily, weekly, or none).
Subscription is a Pro feature

You can embed Power BI dashboards and tiles into your website or custom
application or into a blog as well. There are three ways to accomplish the task:
• Publish to Web
• APIs (REST API, JavaScript API)
• Power BI Embedded Service
Embedding

REST API
The Power BI API is a REST-based API that provides programmatic access to Dashboard
resources such as datasets, tables, and rows in Power BI.
Using the Power BI REST API, you can create a Power BI app in any platform that supports
calling REST operations, realizing interactive dashboards updated in real-time.
With the Power BI REST APIs you can carry out the following operations:
o embed dashboards into your application
o get and create datasets
o get tables and update table schema
o add and delete rows
o get groups

REST API
Logic diagram flow for Power BI REST API
To create an app you need:
- a Power BI service account
- an organizational user in Office 365
- an Azure Active Directory tenant
You have to register the client app with Azure AD to
allow it access to the Power BI REST API.

JavaScript API
The Javascript API enables you to embed reports into your applications and to programmati
cally interacts with those reports and manage them up to the page level.
With the Javascript API you can:
- manage reports and interact through the application directly
- navigate to pages in a report
- filter a report
- handle embedding events and user context

JavaScript API
Power BI reports are embedded into an iFrame inside your application. The JavaScript API
acts like a by-pass through the iFrame boundary so that users can perfom actions and set
options into the application to affect the reports behavior.

PBI Feature
License
APIs are good for:
Embed reports into custom applications
View real-time data
Navigate between pages
Manage user and give permissions through application (impersonate)
Basic and advanced filtering for reports
Manage datasets in background mode
View all available resources

Power BI Embedded
Power BI Embedded is an Azure Service that enables
application developers to add Power BI reports into
their own applications, integrating Power BI into
custom web/mobile application.
Power BI Embedded represents the easiest way to
expose Power BI reports to external users .
Developers can author their reports in Power BI
Desktop and publish into a Power BI workspace in
Azure, without writing code.
As application user there's no request for PBI or Office365 or AD accounts.
The authentication and authorization tasks are managed by Azure.

How Power BI Embedded is different
Power BI Embedded differs from integrating Power BI in apps with API.

Power BI embedded is good for:
Easily embed interactive visuals in your app
Easily create interactive reports without writing code
Manage user; no Power BI account required
Security integration into the application
Easily deliver contents to users

Sharing
• Not applicable : inefficient way for team work. for example, what happens when an
employee leaves and he/she is the only owner of the dashboard?
Groups
• A best practice is to create one group for every measure. Max 5-10 members of
different BU for every group with full permissions. Appraise the use of Office 365
features.
• Membership is managed by hand (we’re looking for a way to make it dynamically).
Content packs
• A best practice is to create one pack for every measure. Max 5-10 member of different
BU for every group with full permissions.
• Can be released to entire workforce.
• Membership is managed by hand.
Subiscription • First release. Quite simple. Subscription is based on the user’s login, must subscribe
one page a time, scheduling is poor.
• Waiting for next versions before adopting it
What you should pay attention to? 1/2

Publish To Web • Not applicable: contents publicly available, no security.
APIs
• Your Apps must be registered in Azure AD. You need an Azure tenant and a
token.
• Impersonating can save you to manage hundreds of users authentication.
• More technical skills required.
• More costs to foresee.
Power BI embedded
• Not applicable: It’s out of scope for internal organization development.
• Azure service. You need to provision a workspace in Azure.
• Costs.
QR code • Not applicable.

There are several ways for Power BI users to interact to MS Office
suite.
Starting from simply download data and analyze it in Excel, to
more refined interactions.
Few add-ins and tools are available. Some are developed directly
from Microsoft, others are third-party tools.
Interaction with MS Office

Export data
Data can be exported from visuals on a dashboard and in
reports
Analyze in Excel Export an .ODC file associated to a dataset in Power BI
Export to PowerPoint Export tiles to PowerPoint
Power BI Publisher for
Excel
Excel add-in to catch snapshots of Excel and pin to
dashboards in Power BI
Power BI Smart Shapes
Third-party Office add-in to embed up-to-date Power B
I visuals into your Power Point documents.
The most powerful.
Licensed.

Power BI Publisher
for Excel
• The better way for interaction between Power BI and Excel.
• Be aware the objects you send from Excel to Power BI are snapshots (still images),
you can’t interact with them.
Export to
PowerPoint
• Currently in preview
• Visuals are converted into still images. No interactivity.
• Custom visuals and R visuals are not supported (so far).
• Generating the file can take a while.
Power BI Smart
Shapes
• The best tools for importing Power BI tiles into Powerpoint. Interaction and
updates are supported.
• You have to pay for license.

Security
External security
(«house rules»)
• Profiling policies
• Roles
• Row level security
• Data storage
• Data at rest
• User authentication
Internal security
(architecture)
We focus only on
«logic» security

Security
External security: your rules
Profiling policies: who sees what. User authorizations; giving
access to a portal, sharing dashboards, content packs, 365
groups, ecc.
Report1 Report2 Report3
Report4 Report5 Report6
Roles: define some roles with visibility rules.
HR department for Soc. A, Soc. B, Soc. C, Sales Manager, ….
Add member to role by e-mail address.
Report4
A____________
B____________
C____________
D____________
Row level security: users visibility is bounded by the role to which
they are associated, up to single row level.
Report4
XXXXXX
B____________
XXXXXX
XXXXXX

Security
Profiling
• What is the level of complexity for your organization? Can you replicate it?
• How many degrees of depth you need? Evaluate if with Power BI you can’t
fulfill all your needs.
• Best fit for simple clusters: top manager, sales manager, entire workforce, …
Start smooth
• For first releases, define few users with clear visibility rules. For example
differenziate according to the company, or the territory.
• Please note there are some limitations for RLS; read them carefully before
developing.
Costly manual
management
• Roles and filters are managed manually. Keep things simple. Do not take charge
of excessive workload.

Security
Application interface
• The best way for user profiling and access control is through a client
application, with users logged in. Authorizations and visibility rules are
demanded to application according to its settings.
Dynamic security
• Some authors tried to implement a dynamic RLS model based on DAX
functions and BI directional cross filtering. Please check the references to
learn more.

Users management and adiministration
Power BI admin
Power BI provides an admin portal that allows you to view usage statistics, to manage
users and groups, and the ability to control tenant wide settings.
Your account needs to be marked as a Global Admin, within Office 365 or
Azure Active Directory, to get access to the Power BI admin portal.

Power BI admin portal – Manage users
User management, for Power BI, is done in the Office 365 admin center.
The Office 365 admin center is the place
where you manage your tenant adding
and deleting users, setting permission
levels, managing domains, licenses, and
much more.

Power BI admin
• You need to be marked as Global Admin within Office 365 or Azure Active
Directory for your Power BI domain (for example www.bancopopolare.it). In my
situation is absolutly impossible! So I always depend on other BU.
Central user
management
• You need Office 365 admin center.
• Users enrollment must be operated by hand, even in Office 365 admin center.
• Admins can create dynamic Office 365 Groups with rule-based memberships using
the Azure Management Portal and AD. But the rules are very simple and you need
Azure AD and a tenant: additional complexity, possible additional costs.
Batch activities
• To perform some batch activities in Office 365 admin center (included users
management) you need to install Azure Active Directory Module for Windows
PowerShell. Additional complexity, possible additional costs.

Management policy – a quick recap
Define roles and assign users for RLS Power BI Desktop/Service
Define rules for users registration Office 365 admin center
Manage users centrally Office 365 admin center/Azure AD
Control usage of specific PBI features Power BI admin portal
Audit Power BI activity Power BI auditing in Office 365

Developed for monitor users business, get fast answers, gain and share business insights wi
th rich visuals.
Mobile App

Mobile application management policy
Mobile App
Compliance rules in your company may raise concerns about the diffusion of sensitive
information in a mobile device.
The Power BI mobile applications, integrate with Intune* to allo
w you to manage the application on your devices, and to contro
l security. You can set up a management policy, to have better c
ontrol to data:
- require access PIN
- encrypting
- Restrict copying rights
- Restrict sharing rights
* Microsoft Intune is a cloud service for managing mobile devices, applications and PCs.

Mobile App
Offline data
• Which data are you expecting to see where you’re offline? How does caching
work?
• Background data refresh (wi-fi 2 hours, 3G 24 hours)
Connection
• Are you devices allowed to surf to powerbi.dot? Our tablets are connected by a
VPN, so the domain must be in whit list.
Supported devices
• What kind of mobile device does your company use? For example we use
Blackberry, that isn’t supported for Power BI.
• How many different devices and OS you should develop for? Focus primarly on a
single model (e.g. only dashoboards for iPad).
Compliance policy
• You must have clear compliance rules for data
• Management by Micrososft Intune adds complexity. Which is the BU in charge of
this burden? Technical or administrative?
App management
• How you can manage OS developments and app updates? Are your user free to
install what they want on your devices?
• You need a centralized administration console, that means additional resources
and additional costs.

Wrap up – Is Power BI ready for enterprise?
How can you promote Power BI inside your organization (key successful features)
Replace Excel for workgroups
Users can access the same resources at the same time
Many data sources available, even from the web
No need for IT support
Powerful data transform and modeling capabilities
Relationshis (stop vertical lookup!). Forget oversized Excel files.
Sharing and collaborative features
Ease of use for making reports and dashboards
Mobile
Connection to Office suite

Missing features
On-premises reports (development started – preview)
Export to Power Point (development started – preview)
Subscriptions (development started - preview)
User profiling
Effective navigation among report pages
Branding
An Integration Services PBI component as data flow destination
Complex drill-down for browsing a hierarchy

Issues
Tricky and tedious users management and administration
Gateway for data on premises (scheduling)
Simple security rules
Excessive dependence on Office 365 and Azure can increase costs and complexity
Pricing
Slow (users complain)

Power BI Community – Give your contribution
Give your contribution for improving
Power BI. Go to the community page
and vote for idea which do you like
better.
Or submit your own suggestion!
https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-
bi?WT.mc_id=Community

http://bit.ly/MSCSevalJ1
Evaluez les sessions…
…et tentez de gagner une
Surface Pro 4

Merci Beaucoup! Thank you!
Join the conversation
#MSCloudSummit
@MSCloudSummit

References
Power BI Governance and Deployment Whitepaper
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/C/48CFCF8A-2025-4B97-B249-
7B505E26E7ED/Power%20BI%20Security%20Whitepaper.docx
Power BI Security Whitepaper
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/8/C/48CFCF8A-2025-4B97-B249-
7B505E26E7ED/Power%20BI%20Security%20Whitepaper.docx
Adam Saxton - Administering Power BI in your organization
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-administering-power-bi-in-your-organization/
Adam Saxton – Power BI Governance and Deployment Approaches
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-governance/
Adam Aspin - Power BI for Data Modelling
https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/bi/power-bi-data-modelling/
Microsoft Power BI Security
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/trustcenter/Security/Power-BISecurity#
Adam Saxton - Row-level security (RLS) with Power BI Desktop
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-rls/

References
Kasper de Jonge - Dynamic security made easy with SSAS 2016 and Power BI
http://www.kasperonbi.com/dynamic-security-made-easy-with-ssas-2016-and-power-bi/
Kasper de Jonge - Power BI Desktop Dynamic security cheat sheet
http://www.kasperonbi.com/power-bi-desktop-dynamic-security-cheat-sheet/
Gilbert Quevauvillie - Power BI – Dynamic Row Level Security – Tips to get it working!
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Power-BI-Dynamic-Row-Level-Security-Tips-to-get-it-working/ba-p/76865
Adam Saxton – Power BI admin portal
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-portal/
Adam Saxton – Power BI Governance and deployment approaches
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-governance/
Adam Saxton – Auditing Power BI in your organization
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-auditing/
Embedding Power BI Reports using REST APIs and Silent authentication via Azure Active Directory
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rajatsinghal/2017/01/17/embedding-power-bi-reports-using-rest-apis-and-silent-authentication-via-azure-
active-directory/

Koen Verbeeck - Dynamic Security in Power BI
http://sqlkover.com/dynamic-security-in-power-bi/
Adam Saxton - Administering Power BI in your organization
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-administering-power-bi-in-your-organization/
90 Day Power BI Implementation Plan
http://angryanalyticsblog.azurewebsites.net/index.php/2016/07/24/90-day-power-bi-implementation-plan-and-
happy-birthday/
References

Introducing Power BI in Your Company

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