Ultimate guide to make the most of Power BI Report Builder for Paginated Reports

Data visualizations in Power BI Report Builder include charts, maps, sparklines, and data bars, which can generate fresh insights beyond what can be done with basic tables and charts.

Let us understand this by taking the example of various employee data forms in any organization. Every employee differs by name, employee ID, profile, and project, and can be more differences. This data cannot be maintained manually.

However, data in its raw form isn’t of any value to a business. Businesses need a way to process data and render summaries, reports, and visualizations from the data. This process makes data a decisive and informative tool for evidence-based decision-making in organizations.

Power BI is a perfect example of such a tool. Microsoft developed it for the analysis and presentation of data using graphical visualizations.

What are Paginated Reports?

Paginated Reports are the types of reports outlined for printing or sharing. They are appertained to as paginated because they are formatted to fit well on a page. They display all data in a table when it spans many pages. They are also pixel-perfect because they can handle their page layout precisely.

Typically, Paginated Reports are made up of several pages. They also have repeating headers, footers, and one page per tab. It is always possible to review your report in Power BI Report Builder before publishing it to the Power BI Service.

For this, we should have a Premium Per User (PPU) or Power BI Pro license to create a report to this service.

Features of Power BI Report Builder

As we know, Power BI Report Builder is a tool that helps publish paginated reports through the Power BI service. This Report Builder has some amazing features that help us throughout the process.

These are all the unique features of Power BI Report Builder.

• Data Modification: We can sludge, filter, and sort data for our reports using Power BI Report Builder. You can even add formulas and expressions to the reports.
• Report Modification: Power BI Report Builder allows us to modernize and customize the reports we produce with the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) Report Designer.
• Reporting from Multiple Sources: It allows us to produce reports that draw relational and multidimensional data from multiple sources like SQL Server and Analysis Services, Power BI datasets, Oracle, and many more.
• Multiple Layouts: We can produce a report for matrix, column-grounded data for summarized data, map reports for graph-based data, and free-form reports for everything differently. The reports can contain other maps and reports, lists, graphics, and controls for dynamic web-grounded operations.
• Interactive Features: We can add multitudinous interactive features to our reports like gauges, charts, sparklines, pointers, drill-through links, and many more.

Understanding the Process of Creating Paginated Reports

The Power BI Report Builder initiates reports in the .rdl file format, and the reports are chiefly used for Operational Reporting.

For this impetus, we want Power BI Report Builder. If someone uses Power BI Service, we can find it under Downloads -> Paginated Report Builder. Open it.

5 Simple Steps for Building Paginated Reports

• Step 1: Choose Blank Report by selecting file New Option.
• Step 2: After the 1 step, produce a data source. For this, we want to right-click the “Data Sources” option from the left. If we want to take the already issued Power BI datasets, select “Add Power BI Dataset Connection...”. To join a new data source, select “Add Data Source.”

We can choose the dataset to require for the development of the report.

• Step 3: We should now create a query instead of the data set. Simply right-click the “Datasets” option from the left and select “Add Dataset.”

Choose the data source and make a query using Query Designer.

• Step 4: Once the data becomes accessible, we can lay out the report. We can build a table and add columns to it from the dataset.
• Step 5: And the last part is clicking the “Run” button from the Home ribbon to test the report.

Using Power BI Report Builder to Publish Paginated Reports

Now, from the steps mentioned above, we have ended the completion of the paginated reports, and we can go forward and print them to the Power BI service. For this, let’s do the following:

• Step 1: Click “File” and choose “Save As.”
• Step 2: Select the “Power BI Service.”
• Step 3: Name the file with an .rdl extension and click “Save.” You can also bring the report to an on-site Power BI Report Server, similar to the SSRS server.

We must ensure that Power BI Report Server only comes with a subgroup of the functions offered by the Power BI Service. We must have an organization-level premium license to use the Power BI Report Server.

• Step 4: Once the report has been issued, we can run it in the Power BI Service.
• Step 5: We can also demonstrate an email subscription to the report for other users and us.

Limitations of Using Power BI Report Builder

Along with the above-mentioned functions and benefits, Power BI also has some drawbacks or limitations, and these are as follows:

• Interactive features like show/hide buttons and document maps are not supported.
• A lot of technical expertise is required in building a Paginated Report. Numerous complex steps are involved, specifically when importing data from external sources.
• Power BI does not provide a way to pull real-time data from external sources. This could delay the data-driven decision-making approach in businesses.

Conclusion

In this blog, we noticed how to make Paginated Reports using Power BI Report Builder in simple steps.

After adding support for hosting Paginated Reports on Power BI Premium, Power BI has become the de facto benchmark for reporting in the Microsoft technology stack. This is an outstanding attempt to include legacy reports (SSRS) into the Power BI framework, so that business users can access both Power BI and SSRS reports from within the Power BI service.

If you try this to solve your Power BI problems and face any difficulty with the process, connect with us using the contact form below. At Beyond Key, our full-fledged team of Power BI experts can help you deploy paginated reports that integrate your existing data from any source to Power BI. You can use these reports to create customized intuitive visuals for you.

Connect with us today for your Power BI requirements.