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Power BI usage scenarios: Embed for your customers

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Note

This article forms part of the Power BI implementation planning series of articles. This series focuses primarily on the Power BI experience within Microsoft Fabric. For an introduction to the series, see Power BI implementation planning.

This usage scenario focuses on how a developer can programmatically embed Power BI content in a custom application for your customers. (The developer isn't necessarily responsible for creating the Power BI content.) The Embed for your customers scenario applies when the application audience comprises users who don't have permission or appropriate licenses to access Power BI content in your organization. The custom application requires an embedding identity that has permission and an appropriate license to access Power BI content. The custom application could be a multitenancy application.

Note

In this scenario, Power BI is platform-as-a-service (PaaS). The embedding scenario is sometimes referred to as App owns data.

Scenario diagram

The following diagram depicts a high-level overview of the most common user actions and Power BI components that support embedding for your customers.

Diagram shows embedding for your customers, which is about integrating content into external applications. Items in the diagram are described in the following table.

Tip

We encourage you to download the scenario diagram if you'd like to embed it in your presentation, documentation, or blog post—or print it out as a wall poster. Because it's a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) image, you can scale it up or down without any loss of quality.

The above diagram depicts the following user actions, tools, and features:

Item Description
Item 1. The Power BI content creator develops a BI solution by using Power BI Desktop.
Item 2. When ready, the content creator publishes the Power BI Desktop file (.pbix) or Power BI project file (.pbip) to the Power BI service.
Item 3. Some data sources may require an On-premises data gateway or VNet gateway for data refresh, like those that reside within a private organizational network.
Item 4. A Power BI workspace contains Power BI items ready for embedding. An embedding identity, either a service principal or master user account, must belong to either the workspace Admin or Member role. In a multi-tenancy solution, the separation of tenants is achieved by creating one workspace for each tenant. This design pattern is known as workspace separation.
Item 5. The custom application prompts the app user to authenticate by using any authentication method (not necessarily Microsoft Entra ID.
Item 6. When authentication succeeds, the custom application uses the embedding identity to acquire and cache a Microsoft Entra access token.
Item 7. The custom application uses the Microsoft Entra access token to make Power BI REST API calls on behalf of the embedding identity. Specifically, the application uses the access token to retrieve metadata about workspace items. Metadata includes properties required to embed content in the custom application. It also uses the access token to generate and cache embed tokens, which represent facts about Power BI content and how the application can access it.
Item 8. The custom application embeds a specific Power BI item in an iframe HTML element. The application can support the creation and editing of Power BI reports, providing the embedding identity has permission to do so.
Item 9. Power BI administrators oversee and monitor activity in the Power BI service.

Key points

The following are some key points to emphasize about programmatically embed Power BI content in a custom application for your customers.

Use case

Often, embedding for your customers is done by Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). ISVs recognize a need to embed analytics in their apps. It allows users to have direct access to in-context insights, helping them make decisions based on facts instead of opinions. Instead of developing visualizations, it's usually faster and less expensive to embed Power BI content.

ISVs can develop a multitenancy application, where each of their customers is a tenant. A multitenancy application that embeds Power BI analytics will use the Embed for your customers scenario because the application users include external users. Multitenancy applications are described in more detail later in this article.

Embeddable content

When embedding for your customers, you can embed the following Power BI content types:

  • Power BI reports
  • Specific Power BI report visuals
  • Paginated reports
  • Q&A experience
  • Dashboards
  • Specific dashboard tiles

There's no limitation on where the content resides, except the content can't reside in a personal workspace. What matters is that the embedding identity has permission to view (or create or edit) the content.

Authentication

The authentication flow is non-interactive authentication with Microsoft Entra ID (also known as silent authentication). Non-interactive authentication means that the app user isn't required to have a Power BI account, and even when they do, it isn't used. So a dedicated Microsoft Entra identity, known as the embedding identity, authenticates with Microsoft Entra ID. An embedding identity can be a service principal or a master user account (described later).

The authentication flow attempts to acquire a Microsoft Entra token in a way in which the authentication service can't prompt the user for additional information. Once the app user authenticates with the app (the app can use any authentication method), the app uses the embedding identity to acquire a Microsoft Entra token by using a non-interactive authentication flow.

Once the app acquires a Microsoft Entra token, it caches it and then uses it to generate an embed token. An embed token represents facts about Power BI content and how to access them. The app uses the embed token to embed content inside an iframe HTML element.

Service principal

An app can use a service principal to acquire a Microsoft Entra token. A Microsoft Entra service principal is a security identity used by apps. It defines the access policy and permissions for the app in the Microsoft Entra tenant, enabling core features such as authentication of the app during sign in, and authorization during resource access. A service principal can authenticate by using an app secret or certificate. A service principal can only use Power BI REST APIs, when the Allow service principals to use Power BI APIs tenant setting is enabled, and the service principal belongs to an allowed group.

Tip

We recommend using a service principal for production apps. It provides the highest security and for this reason it's the approach recommended by Microsoft Entra ID. Also, it supports better automation and scale and there's less management overhead. However, it requires Power BI admin rights to set up and manage.

Master user account

An app can use a master user account to acquire an AD token. A master user account is a regular Microsoft Entra user. In Power BI, the account must belong to the workspace Admin or Member role to embed workspace content. It must also have either a Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license.

Note

It's not possible to use a master user account to embed paginated reports.

For more information about embedding identities, see Set up permissions to embed Power BI content.

Licensing

When embedding Power BI content for your customers, you need to ensure that content resides in a workspace that has one of the following license modes:

Important

At times this article refers to Power BI Premium or its capacity subscriptions (P SKUs). Be aware that Microsoft is currently consolidating purchase options and retiring the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs. New and existing customers should consider purchasing Fabric capacity subscriptions (F SKUs) instead.

For more information, see Important update coming to Power BI Premium licensing and Power BI Premium FAQ.

Each license mode option requires the purchase of a billable product that is a capacity-based license. A capacity-based license allows you to create reserved capacities.

Capacities represent the computational resources that are required to process workloads, such as report rendering and data refresh. Reserved capacities are isolated from other customers' workloads, so they offer scale that can deliver dependable and consistent performance.

Note

It's not possible to use the Embed for your customers scenario in production environments with the Fabric (free), Power BI Pro, or Power BI PPU licenses.

For more information about products and licensing, see Select the appropriate Power BI embedded analytics product.

Power BI client APIs

The Power BI client APIs allow a developer to achieve tight integration between the custom application and the Power BI content. They develop the application by writing custom logic with JavaScript or TypeScript that runs in the browser.

The application can set up and automate operations, and it can respond to user-initiated actions. Additionally, you can integrate Power BI capabilities, including navigation, filters and slicers, menu operations, layout, and bookmarks.

Tip

The Power BI Embedded Analytics Playground is a website that helps you learn, explore, and experiment with Power BI embedded analytics. It includes a developer sandbox for hands-on experiences that use the client APIs with sample Power BI content or your own content. Code snippets and showcases are available for you to explore, too.

For more information, see What is the Power BI embedded analytics playground?

Enforce data permissions

When the app users should only have access to view a subset of data, you need to develop a solution that restricts access to Power BI semantic model data. The reason might be because some users aren't permitted to view specific data, such as sales results of other sales regions. Achieving this requirement commonly involves setting up row-level security (RLS), which involves defining roles and rules that filter model data.

When you use the For your customers scenario, the app must set the effective identity of the embed token to restrict access to data. This effective identity determines how Power BI will connect to the model and how it will enforce RLS roles. How you set up the effective identity depends on the type of Power BI semantic model.

For more information about RLS roles for embedded content, see Enforce data permissions for Power BI embedded analytics.

Multitenancy applications

Multiple organizations can use a multitenancy app, where each organization is a tenant. A multitenancy app that embeds Power BI analytics can use the Embed for your customers scenario because the app users include external users. When designing a multitenancy app, you can choose from two different tenancy models.

The recommended approach is to use the workspace separation model. You can achieve this approach by creating one Power BI workspace for each tenant. Each workspace contains Power BI artifacts that are specific to that tenant, and the semantic models connect to a separate database for each tenant.

Tip

For more information about the workspace separation model, see Automate workspace separation. For more information about scalable multitenancy apps, see Service principal profiles for multitenancy apps in Power BI Embedded.

Alternatively, the single multi-customer database model is available. When you use this model, your solution will achieve separation with a single workspace that includes a set of Power BI items that are shared across all tenants. RLS roles, which are defined in the semantic models, will help filter the data more securely to ensure that organizations only view their own data.

No-code embedding

Developing a programmatic solution requires skill, time, and effort. Consider that there's one embedding technique known as no-code embedding that non-developers can use to embed Power BI reports or dashboards in Power Pages.

Gateway setup

Typically, a data gateway is required when accessing data sources that reside within the private organizational network or a virtual network. The two purposes of a gateway are to refresh imported data, or view a report that queries a live connection or DirectQuery semantic model.

Note

A centralized data gateway in standard mode is strongly recommended over gateways in personal mode. In standard mode, the data gateway supports live connection and DirectQuery operations (in addition to scheduled data refresh operations).

System oversight

The activity log records user activities that occur in the Power BI service. Power BI administrators can use the activity log data that's collected to perform auditing to help them understand usage patterns and adoption.

Related content

To learn more about Power BI embedded analytics, work through the Embed Power BI analytics learning path.

You can also work through the Power BI Developer in a Day course. It includes a self-study kit that guides you through the process of developing an ASP.NET Core MVC app.

For other useful scenarios to help you with Power BI implementation decisions, see the Power BI usage scenarios article.