Creating a Power BI app

At a high level, the steps involved with creating a Power BI app are as follows:

  1. Navigate to the workspace that contains the content you’d like to distribute as an app.
  2. Click the Create app button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
  3. Provide the name and description of the app to be published.
  4. Provide optional information, such as the app logo, theme color, contact information, and support URL.
  5. Configure navigation for the app by clicking the Navigation link at the top of the page.
  6. Configure permissions for the app by clicking the Permissions link at the top of the page.
  7. Click Publish app in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

Next, we will look at each of the steps to publish a Power BI app in detail.

First, we’ll need to start from an existing workspace that contains the reports and dashboard we’d like to distribute. This will be on the PowerBI.com service and will look something like Figure 14.3:

Figure 14.3 – A Power BI workspace with reports and dashboards

After clicking the Create app button, we’ll see a wizard-like menu that will walk us through the creation of Power BI from the assets in this workspace.

The first things we need to provide to create the app are the name and description. After that, there are optional values, such as the URL to support, an app logo, the theme color, and contact information to go along with the app. These values are important because for any published data assets within an organization, it’s important to know how to get support for that dataset as well as who is publishing the dataset (in this case, within the app), while the color and logo are important for building the brand of the app within the organization and to help users connect with the information presented in the app.

Figure 14.4 – Creating a Power BI app

The next configuration for the app includes the navigation. At the top of the configuration page, we can click the Navigation tab to set the preferences for navigating the content of the workspace.

Figure 14.5 shows the navigation configuration using the new navigation builder. The navigation screen is where we can change the order of the reports to be shown in the app, as well as hiding some reports or dashboards so they won’t be included in the app:

Figure 14.5 – Configuration of the app navigation

In our previous example, the finance team has been publishing reports and making dashboards in this workspace, but for the C-suite audience, maybe we don’t need reports showing detailed financial information and instead only need to distribute the high-level information that the C-suite audience will need.

Hovering over each item on the left-hand side of the screen will show the up and down arrows as well as the eye icon, which can be used to hide that item. Using the + New button, it’s also possible to create sections that reports and dashboards can be grouped into as well as links to external content, as shown in Figure 14.6:

Figure 14.6 – Organizing workspace content inside the app navigation configuration

Lastly, you need to review the permissions that the app will have once it’s published. Click the Permissions tab at the top of the screen to specify the users or groups that will have access to the app or that it will be available to all users in the organization.

This is also where you specify downstream permissions that might need to change to the workspace and the containing assets, as well as giving (or revoking) permissions to copy reports in the app or allow sharing of the app and underlying assets.

Figure 14.7 – Permissions configuration for a Power BI app

Figure 14.7 shows how permissions options can be set. You’ll notice the option for Install this app automatically. is grayed out. This is disabled by default (as shown) but can be enabled in the Power BI admin portal by enabling it in Tenant settings | Content pack and app settings | Push apps to end users.

Figure 14.8 – Enabling Push apps to end users in the Power BI admin portal

Once this default setting has been changed in the admin portal, as shown in Figure 14.8, then the option to install the app automatically for users will be available. Be aware that this option is only available if access to the app is for specific individuals or groups. In our example of publishing the app to the C-suite, we’d want to select a group that contains only the C-suite users and then install the app automatically so this published app is easily accessible to the end users.

Power BI apps are a useful way to help end users consume, find, and use reports and dashboards to answer important business questions. Apps provide content creators with a way to custom-tailor the content for the appropriate audience to increase impact.

In the next section, we’ll see how workspaces are also helpful for the development life cycle.