Tutorial: Snapshot Power BI Dashboards in response to data alerts

Use Power Automate and BI Helper to generate and email PDF / PPTX snapshots of Power BI Dashboards in response to data alerts.

Reporting automation for Power BI Pro, PPU and Premium.

In this tutorial, we will trigger PDF report generation in Power BI in response to a Power BI Dashboard data alert.

Note: This tutorial applies to Power BI Dashboards, not Power BI Reports.

Prerequisites (follow hyperlinks in each step):

1. Microsoft Power Automate login and a Power BI Pro license.
2. BI Helper login.
3. BI Helper flow template to generate PDF reports in response to data alerts.
4. Setting data alerts in Power BI.
5. BI Helper API documentation.

Steps:

1. [BI Helper] Register on BI Helper and create a new job for a Power BI Dashboard by following steps 1–3 of this tutorial. Note your BI Helper username, password and Job ID.

Job ID: Click on Edit Job (pencil icon) in the BI Helper Job Summary tab to get the Job ID in the URL. Example: In https://portal.bihelper.tech/#/user-jobs/3/edit, the Job ID is 3.

2. [Power Automate]Sign in to Power Automate with your Microsoft login and import this flow template to generate reports in response to data alerts.

Import flow template

3. [Power Automate] After importing the flow template, you will be asked to select your Power BI account. Create a new connection if your Power BI account is not linked to Power Automate.

Important: If you get an error message on importing the Flow, ignore the error and click on My Flows. Refresh the page and you will see the flow in your list.

Link Power Automate to Power BI

4. [Power Automate] Once the BI Helper flow template is imported, go to My Flows and Edit your flow. Make sure to Turn on your flow.

Turn on the flow

5. [Power Automate] In Edit mode, enter the Power BI alert ID, BI Helper username, password and Job ID (from step 1).

Edit flow

6. [Power Automate] Save your flow and run it.

Run flow

Whenever the defined data-driven alert is triggered in Power BI, Power Automate will invoke the downstream BI Helper job to generate and email a PDF snapshot of your Power BI Dashboard to your users!

Customizations in BI Helper

You can customize file names, folders, email text and report pages to print. You can generate Excel files for matrix and table visuals, apply multiple slicers and filters or generate PPTX files instead of PDFs.

Finally, you can download the PDF/PPTX reports to your environment and distribute them in different ways instead of sending them as email attachments. Refer to our product documentation for details.

BI Helper

BI Helper bihelper.tech is a simple, secure and cost effective SaaS solution for PDF report distribution in Tableau and Power BI. You only need a single Power BI / Tableau license to generate your PDF reports.

Resource: BI Helper Tutorial | Report Distribution in BI Tools