With the rising popularity of Power BI, we can design fancy dashboards and reports. But, what if we need to design and download reports similar to traditional SSRS reports?
Well, Power BI service supports similar reports which can be build using Power BI Paginated Report Builder. Although there are few limitations but if you are considering Power BI for reporting purpose then maybe you want to check this feature.
What are paginated reports?
Paginated reports are the long standard report format in SQL Server Reporting Services, are now available in the Power BI service. These reports can be printed or shared. They’re called “paginated” because they’re formatted to fit well on a page. They display all the data in a table, even if the table spans multiple pages. They’re sometimes called “pixel-perfect” because you can control their report page layout exactly.
You can publish and share paginated reports in your My Workspace or in app workspaces, as long as the workspace is in a Power BI Premium capacity.
A Power BI admin needs to enable paginated reports in the Premium capacities section of the Power BI admin portal.
How to build Paginated Reports in Power BI?
Power BI Paginated Report Builder is a tool for authoring paginated reports.
When you design a paginated report, you’re creating a report definition that specifies what data to retrieve, where to get it, and how to display it. When you run the report, the report processor takes the report definition you have specified, retrieves the data, and combines it with the report layout to generate the report. You preview your report in Report Builder. Then publish your report to the Power BI service.
Paginated reports are based on the RDL report technology in SQL Server Reporting Services.
In fact, paginated reports that you create for SSRS 2016 and 2017 or for Power BI Report Server on-premises, are compatible with the Power BI service.
Connect to various Data Sources
For now, you can’t use shared data sources or shared datasets. Here are the data sources you can connect to at this time:
- Azure SQL Database and Data Warehouse (via Basic and OAuth)
- Azure Analysis Services (via SSO)
- SQL Server via a gateway
- SQL Server Analysis Services via a gateway
- Power BI Datasets
- Oracle
- Teradata
If a report connects to on-premises data, after you upload the report to the Power BI service, you need to create a gateway and redirect the data connection.
Current Limitations and Considerations:
Currently, few of the features are not available in Power BI paginated report and hence we have to keep them in mind before considering this for the next project:
- Pinning report pages or visuals to Power BI dashboards. You can still pin visualizations to a Power BI dashboard from an on-premises paginated report on a Power BI Report Server or Reporting Services report server.
- Document Maps.
- Subreports and drill-through reports. You may consider using URL parameters with paginated reports to achieve drill through scenarios, however.
- Shared data sources and shared datasets.
References:
- What are paginated reports?
- Power BI Paginated Report Builder
- Publish a paginated report to the Power BI service
