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Tutorial: Embed a Power BI report in an application for your customers

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In this tutorial, you learn how to embed a Power BI report in a .NET 5.0 application, as part of the embed-for-your-customers (also known as an app-owns-data) solution. In an embed-for-your-customers solution, your app users don't need to sign in to Power BI or have a Power BI license.

In this tutorial, you learn how to embed:

  • A Power BI report.
  • In an embed-for-your-customers app.
  • By using a service principal.
  • By using .NET 5.0.
  • With the Microsoft.Identity.Web library (this library is also supported in .NET Core).

Note

The full solution used in this tutorial is available from the DOTNET5-AppOwnsData-Tutorial GitHub repository.

Prerequisites

Resources

In this tutorial, you use:

Method

To embed Power BI content in an embed-for-your-customers solution, follow these steps:

  1. Configure your Microsoft Entra app and service principal.

  2. Get the embedding parameter values.

  3. Add the required NuGet packages.

  4. Enable server side authentication.

  5. Build your app's client side.

  6. Run your application.

Step 1 - Configure your Microsoft Entra app and service principal

In this tutorial, you use a service principal to authenticate your web app against Microsoft Entra ID. You also need a Microsoft Entra app, which makes it possible to generate an Microsoft Entra token. By using the Microsoft Entra token, your web app can call Power BI REST APIs and embed Power BI items, such as reports, dashboards, and tiles.

Follow the service principal instructions to create a Microsoft Entra app and enable the app's service principal to work with your Power BI content.

Step 2 - Get the embedding parameter values

To embed your report, you need the following values:

Domain and tenant ID

If you don't know your domain or tenant ID, see Find the Microsoft Entra tenant ID and primary domain name.

Note

To embed content for a user on a different tenant (guest user), you need to adjust the authorityUri parameter.

Client ID

To get the client ID GUID (also know as application ID), follow these steps:

  1. Log into Microsoft Azure.

  2. Search for App registrations and select the App registrations link.

  3. Select the Microsoft Entra app you're using for embedding your Power BI content.

  4. From the Overview section, copy the Application (client) ID GUID.

Client secret

To get the client secret, follow these steps:

  1. Log into Microsoft Azure.

  2. Search for App registrations and select the App registrations link.

  3. Select the Microsoft Entra app you're using for embedding your Power BI content.

  4. Under Manage, select Certificates & secrets.

  5. Under Client secrets, select New client secret.

  6. In the Add a client secret pop-up window, provide a description for your application secret, select when the application secret expires, and select Add.

  7. From the Client secrets section, copy the string in the Value column of the newly created application secret. The client secret value is your client ID.

Note

Make sure you copy the client secret value when it first appears. After navigating away from this page, the client secret will be hidden and you'll not be able to retrieve its value.

Workspace ID

To get the workspace ID GUID, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to Power BI service.

  2. Open the report you want to embed.

  3. Copy the GUID from the URL. The GUID is the number between /groups/ and /reports/.

    A screenshot showing workspace ID GUID in the Power BI service URL

Note

To get the workspace ID programmatically, use the Get Groups API.

Report ID

To get the report ID GUID, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to Power BI service.

  2. Open the report you want to embed.

  3. Copy the GUID from the URL. The GUID is the number between /reports/ and /ReportSection.

    A screenshot showing report ID GUID in the Power B I service U R L

Note

To get the report ID programmatically, use the Get Reports In Group API.

Step 3 - Add the required NuGet packages

Before you can start, you need to add the Microsoft.Identity.Web, and Microsoft.PowerBI.Api NuGet packages to your app.

Add the required NuGet packages to your app:

  • In VS Code, open a terminal and enter the following code.

  • In Visual Studio, navigate to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Package Manager Console and type in the following code.

dotnet add package Microsoft.Identity.Web
dotnet add package Microsoft.Identity.Web.UI
dotnet add package Microsoft.PowerBI.Api

Step 4 - Enable server-side authentication

Turn on server-side authentication in your app by creating or modifying the files in the following table.

File Use
Startup.cs Initialize the Microsoft.Identity.Web authentication service
appsettings.json Configure authentication details
PowerBiServiceApi.cs Get the Microsoft Entra token and embedding metadata
HomeController.cs Pass embedding data as a model to the view

Configure your startup file to support Microsoft.Identity.Web

Modify the code in Startup.cs to properly initialize the authentication service provided by Microsoft.Identity.Web.

Add the following code to your app's Startup.cs file.

Note

The code in ConfigureServices accomplishes several important things:

  1. The call to AddMicrosoftWebAppCallsWebApi configures the Microsoft Authentication Library to acquire access tokens (Microsoft Entra tokens).
  2. The call to AddInMemoryTokenCaches configures a token cache that the Microsoft Authentication Library uses to cache access tokens and refresh tokens behind the scenes.
  3. The call to services.AddScoped(typeof(PowerBiServiceApi)) configures the PowerBiServiceApi class as a service class that can be added to other classes by using dependency injection.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization;
using Microsoft.Identity.Web;
using Microsoft.Identity.Web.UI;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.HttpsPolicy;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Authorization;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting;
using AppOwnsData.Services;

namespace AppOwnsData
{
    public class Startup
    {
        public Startup(IConfiguration configuration)
        {
            Configuration = configuration;
        }

        public IConfiguration Configuration { get; }

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container.
        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) {

    services.AddMicrosoftIdentityWebAppAuthentication(Configuration)
            .EnableTokenAcquisitionToCallDownstreamApi()
            .AddInMemoryTokenCaches();

            services.AddScoped(typeof(PowerBiServiceApi));

            services.AddControllersWithViews(options => {
                var policy = new AuthorizationPolicyBuilder()
                    .RequireAuthenticatedUser()
                    .Build();
                options.Filters.Add(new AuthorizeFilter(policy));
            });
            services.AddRazorPages()
                    .AddMicrosoftIdentityUI();
        }

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
        {
            if (env.IsDevelopment())
            {
                app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
            }
            else
            {
                app.UseExceptionHandler("/Home/Error");
                // The default HSTS value is 30 days. You might want to change this for production scenarios. See https://aka.ms/aspnetcore-hsts.
                app.UseHsts();
            }
            app.UseHttpsRedirection();
            app.UseStaticFiles();

            app.UseRouting();

            app.UseAuthentication();
            app.UseAuthorization();

            app.UseEndpoints(endpoints =>
            {
                endpoints.MapControllerRoute(
                    name: "default",
                    pattern: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
                endpoints.MapRazorPages();
            });
        }
    }
}

Create an authentication details file

In this tutorial, the appsettings.json file contains sensitive information, such as client ID and client secret. For security reasons, we don't recommend that you keep this information in the settings file. When embedding in your application, consider a more secure tool, such as Azure Key Vault, to secure sensitive information.

  1. In your project, create a new file and name it appsettings.json.

  2. Add the following code to appsettings.json:

    {
 "AzureAd": {
   "Instance": "https://login.microsoftonline.com/",
   "Domain": "yourtenant.onMicrosoft.com",
   "TenantId": "",
   "ClientId": "",
   "ClientSecret": "",
   "CallbackPath": "/signin-oidc",
   "SignedOutCallbackPath": "/signout-callback-oidc"
 },
 "PowerBi": {
   "ServiceRootUrl": "https://api.powerbi.com/"
 },
 "Logging": {
   "LogLevel": {
     "Default": "Information",
     "Microsoft": "Warning",
     "Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime": "Information"
   }
 },
"AllowedHosts": "*"
}

  3. Fill in the embedding parameter values obtained from Step 2 - Get the embedding parameter values.

Note

In the preceding code, the PowerBi:ServiceRootUrl parameter is added as a custom configuration value to track the base URL to the Power BI service. When you program against the Power BI service in the Microsoft public cloud, the URL is https://api.powerbi.com/. However, the root URL for the Power BI service is different in other clouds, such as the government cloud. Therefore, the custom configuration value is stored as a project configuration value, so you can change it as needed.

Get the Microsoft Entra access token and call the Power BI service

In order to embed Power BI content like reports and dashboards, your app needs to get an Microsoft Entra token. To get the token, you need a configuration object.

The code in this section uses the .NET Core dependency injection pattern. When your class needs to use a service, you can add a constructor parameter for that service. The .NET Core runtime takes care of passing the service instance at run time. In this case, the constructor injects an instance of the .NET Core configuration service by using the IConfiguration parameter, which is used to retrieve the PowerBi:ServiceRootUrl configuration value from appsettings.json. The ITokenAcquisition parameter, which is named tokenAcquisition, holds a reference to the Microsoft authentication service provided by the Microsoft.Identity.Web library. The ITokenAcquisition parameter is used to acquire access tokens from Microsoft Entra ID.

The RequiredScopes field holds a string array that contains a set of delegated permissions supported by the Power BI service API. When your application calls across the network to acquire a Microsoft Entra token, it passes this set of delegated permissions so that Microsoft Entra ID can include them in the access token it returns.

Note

Verify that your Microsoft Entra app is configured with the scopes required by your web app. For more information, see Change your Microsoft Entra app's permissions.

  1. In your app's project, create a new folder titled Services.

  2. In the Services folder, create a new file titled PowerBiServiceApi.cs.

  3. Add the following code to PowerBiServiceApi.cs.

    using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Identity.Web;
using Microsoft.Rest;
using Microsoft.PowerBI.Api;
using Microsoft.PowerBI.Api.Models;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

namespace AppOwnsData.Services {

    // A view model class to pass the data needed to embed a single report
    public class EmbeddedReportViewModel {
        public string Id;
        public string Name;
        public string EmbedUrl;
        public string Token;
    }

    public class PowerBiServiceApi {

        private ITokenAcquisition tokenAcquisition { get; }
        private string urlPowerBiServiceApiRoot { get; }

        public PowerBiServiceApi(IConfiguration configuration, ITokenAcquisition tokenAcquisition) {
            this.urlPowerBiServiceApiRoot = configuration["PowerBi:ServiceRootUrl"];
            this.tokenAcquisition = tokenAcquisition;
        }

        public const string powerbiApiDefaultScope = "https://analysis.windows.net/powerbi/api/.default";

        // A method to get the Azure AD token (also known as 'access token')
        public string GetAccessToken() {
            return this.tokenAcquisition.GetAccessTokenForAppAsync(powerbiApiDefaultScope).Result;
        }

        public PowerBIClient GetPowerBiClient() {
            var tokenCredentials = new TokenCredentials(GetAccessToken(), "Bearer");
            return new PowerBIClient(new Uri(urlPowerBiServiceApiRoot), tokenCredentials);
        }

        public async Task<EmbeddedReportViewModel> GetReport(Guid WorkspaceId, Guid ReportId) {

            PowerBIClient pbiClient = GetPowerBiClient();

            // Call the Power BI service API to get the embedding data.
            var report = await pbiClient.Reports.GetReportInGroupAsync(WorkspaceId, ReportId);

            // Generate a read-only embed token for the report.
            var datasetId = report.DatasetId;
            var tokenRequest = new GenerateTokenRequest(TokenAccessLevel.View, datasetId);
            var embedTokenResponse = await pbiClient.Reports.GenerateTokenAsync(WorkspaceId, ReportId, tokenRequest);
            var embedToken = embedTokenResponse.Token;

            // Return the report embedded data to caller.
            return new EmbeddedReportViewModel {
                Id = report.Id.ToString(),
                EmbedUrl = report.EmbedUrl,
                Name = report.Name,
                Token = embedToken
            };
        }

    }
}

Modify the HomeController.cs file

In this code example, you use dependency injection to modify the HomeController.cs file. By following a previous step, you configured the PowerBiServiceApi class as a service by calling services.AddScoped in the ConfigureServices method. With this code, you add a PowerBiServiceApi parameter to the constructor, and the .NET Core runtime creates a PowerBiServiceApi instance and pass it to the constructor.

From the Controllers folder, open the HomeController.cs file and add the following code to it:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using AppOwnsData.Models;
using AppOwnsData.Services;

namespace AppOwnsData.Controllers
{
    [Authorize]
    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
        private PowerBiServiceApi powerBiServiceApi;

        public HomeController(PowerBiServiceApi powerBiServiceApi)
        {
            this.powerBiServiceApi = powerBiServiceApi;
        }

        [AllowAnonymous]
        public IActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();
        }

        public async Task<IActionResult> Embed() {

            // Replace these two GUIDs with the workspace ID and report ID you recorded earlier.
            Guid workspaceId = new Guid("11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111");
            Guid reportId = new Guid("22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222");

            var viewModel = await powerBiServiceApi.GetReport(workspaceId, reportId);

            return View(viewModel);
        }

        [AllowAnonymous]
        [ResponseCache(Duration = 0, Location = ResponseCacheLocation.None, NoStore = true)]
        public IActionResult Error()
        {
            return View(new ErrorViewModel { RequestId = Activity.Current?.Id ?? HttpContext.TraceIdentifier });
        }
    }
}

Step 5 - Build your app's client side

For client-side implementation, you need to create or modify the files that are listed in the following table:

File Use
embed.js Contains the client-side JavaScript code
Embed.cshtml Contains your app's document object model (DOM) and a DIV for embedding the report

Create a container for your embedded report

In this tutorial, you create the Embed.cshtml file, which has a div element that's a container for your embedded report, and three scripts.

  1. In the View/Home folder, create a file called Embed.cshtml.

  2. Add the following code to the Embed.cshtml file.

    @model AppOwnsData.Services.EmbeddedReportViewModel;

<div id="embed-container" style="height:800px;"></div>

@section Scripts {

    <!-- powerbi.min.js is the JavaScript file that loads the client-side Power BI JavaScript API library.
    Make sure that you're working with the latest library version.
    You can check the latest library available in https://cdnjs.com/libraries/powerbi-client -->
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/powerbi-client@2.18.0/dist/powerbi.min.js"></script>

    <!-- This script creates a JavaScript object named viewModel which is accessible to the JavaScript code in embed.js. -->
    <script> 
        var viewModel = {
            reportId: "@Model.Id",
            embedUrl: "@Model.EmbedUrl",
            token: "@Model.Token"
        }; 
    </script>

    <!-- This script specifies the location of the embed.js file -->
    <script src="~/js/embed.js"></script>
}

Add client-side JavaScript to embed your report

To embed Power BI content, you need to create a configuration object. To learn more about creating the configuration object, see Embed a report.

In this tutorial, you create a JavaScript file named embed.js with a configuration object for embedding your report that uses the variable models.

You can initialize models by using a call to window['powerbi-client'].models. The models variable is used to set configuration values such as models.Permissions.All, models.TokenType.Aad, and models.ViewMode.View.

The powerbi.embed function uses the models configuration object to embed your report.

  1. In the wwwroot/js folder, create a file called embed.js.

  2. Add the following code to the embed.js file.

    $(function () {

    // 1 - Get DOM object for the div that's the report container.
    var reportContainer = document.getElementById("embed-container");

    // 2 - Get the report embedding data from the view model.
    var reportId = window.viewModel.reportId;
    var embedUrl = window.viewModel.embedUrl;
    var token = window.viewModel.token

    // 3 - Embed the report by using the Power BI JavaScript API.
    var models = window['powerbi-client'].models;

    var config = {
      type: 'report',
      id: reportId,
      embedUrl: embedUrl,
      accessToken: token,
      permissions: models.Permissions.All,
      tokenType: models.TokenType.Embed,
      viewMode: models.ViewMode.View,
      settings: {
        panes: {
          filters: { expanded: false, visible: true },
          pageNavigation: { visible: false }
        }
      }
    };

    // Embed the report and display it within the div container.
    var report = powerbi.embed(reportContainer, config);

    // 4 - Add logic to resize the embed container on a window resize event.
    var heightBuffer = 12;
    var newHeight = $(window).height() - ($("header").height() + heightBuffer);
    $("#embed-container").height(newHeight);
    $(window).resize(function () {
      var newHeight = $(window).height() - ($("header").height() + heightBuffer);
      $("#embed-container").height(newHeight);
    });

  });

Step 6 - Run your application

After you've followed all previous steps, you're ready to run your application. Try running your application, and experiment with the way your Power BI report is embedded. You can use the Power BI embedded analytics Client APIs to enhance your app by using client-side APIs.

Important

If you used free embed trial tokens for development, you must buy a capacity for production. Until a capacity is purchased, the Free trial version banner continues to appear at the top of the embedded report.

When your app is ready, you can move your embedded app to production.

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