We connect a read-only view of your business data to Power BI datasets and reports.
Many organisations already use Power BI for management reporting, but feed it by exporting spreadsheets every month. That makes reports late and easy to get wrong. Giving Power BI a controlled, read-only connection to the same data your operations use means dashboards refresh on schedule and everyone sees the same numbers.
What we build with it
- Refreshing a report against live data rather than a monthly export
- Building dashboards on the same figures the operational system uses
- Sharing reports through Power BI to people who never open the business system
How it works
- We create a read-only reporting view or user covering only the tables and fields you approve.
- Power BI connects to that view, directly or through an on-premises data gateway if the database is not reachable from the internet.
- Reports and dashboards are built in Power BI on that data, with clear names for fields and measures.
- Scheduled refresh keeps the reports current, and sharing is managed in Power BI.
Data exchanged
- Read-only rows from the tables in scope
- No writes back from Power BI
What is needed to set it up
- A Power BI licence
- A read-only connection scoped to the tables you approve
- Agreement on refresh frequency
Good to know
- Sharing reports in the Power BI service generally requires suitable licences for those who publish and view them, bought from Microsoft.
- The number of scheduled refreshes per day depends on your Power BI licence.
- Row-level security in Power BI can restrict what each viewer sees, such as a branch manager seeing only their branch.
