Has anyone managed to embed power bi charts directly into an iOS application. For example to call a chart and embed it into a view controller? Is this even possible?
https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-JavaScript/wiki/Embed-For-Mobile
You can embed Power BI Embedded artifacts (Report, Dashboard, Tile, Q&A) in any webview based environment, including iOS Webview.
You can either use a pre-set mobile layout and load it via the JS SDK in the config, or use custom layout: https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-JavaScript/wiki/Custom-Layout
For a single chart\visual you can use: https://github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-JavaScript/wiki/Embed-Single-Visual
Power BI reports can be embedded into a web page, which you can display from within your app.
From Power BI, click publish to web and then request an embed code.
Don't forget, if you don't like this approach you can always request a new feature.
EDIT
The Power BI developer site includes instructions for integrating a dashboard into your app. This method uses the Power BI Rest API to auth via Azure Active Directory and OAuth 2.0.
This approach has some limitations:
The end users who access the embedded dashboards must have Power BI accounts and the dashboards should be shared with them.
Currently Q&A is not supported in embedded dashboards.
As a temporary limitation, when sharing a dashboard with security groups, user have to first access the dashboards in PowerBI.com before they can see it embedded.
Related
how to integrate PowerBI reports from local system and use them in the asp.net MVC? i'm trying to integrate powerBI report in my project which is published on powerBI report server in my system (not online powerBI). while googling i'm not able to find what i needed, most of them recommends to publish the report to cloud and embed them.
To embed a report from Power BI Report Server, add an iframe in your app, with source the URL of the report, and added the following query string parameter ?rs:embed=true. For example:
https://myserver/reports/powerbi/Sales?rs:embed=true
If your app will be used inside your network, this is enough. But if you want to use it by users over internet (users, which are not in your network), then you will need to expose the Power BI Report Server's reports portal to the world too.
For more information see:
Embed a Power BI Report Server report using an iFrame in SharePoint Server
Embedding Power BI Reports with Power BI Report Server
Planning for Extranet or Internet Deployment (PBIRS is in fact SSRS).
We are having multi tenant web application designed in asp.net mvc. Our database is stored on Azure. We have created security policy in the database so no client can see data of another client, and in every table we have tenant id for each entry.
We have created some dashboards using power bi, data is being accessed using sql stored procedure which has tenant id parameter.for testing purpose i supply tenant id while running dashboards inside power bi desktop. Now we are trying to integrate those dashboards to our web application. for this we have done necessary changes in the web.config file.
Issue is how will we supply tenantID for which user is logged in to power bi so that user can see data for that particular client only?
Thanks in advance.
It depends on the storage mode of your report (Imported or DirectQuery) and how it will be integrated in your app (Embedded API, Publish to web (public) or Secure embed).
If the storage mode is Imported, this means that your report contains a copy of the data. The consequence is that you can't query the database and get the data based on the current user, because the copy of the data is one and it is shared with all users, which are looking at your report. So the data should be for all tenants and you must filter it in each users session. The filtering can be made in two ways - by adding a "normal" report level filter or by implementing Row-level security (RLS).
Filtering can be achieved by passing the filter in the URL or defining the filter in the embedded configuration. First one can be used with Secure embed, while the later one is applicable when using Embedded API. Note, that Publish to web method doesn't support URL filters. Important part is that the filter added this way will be visible in the Filters pane and the user can modify it or remove it (so it's not a good way to secure your data). If you are embedding the report using the API, you can hide the Filters pane by setting filterPaneEnabled: false in the embed config, but this will also hide all other filters and the end user will be able to slice the data only with the visuals provided by you (e.g. slicers in the report). Also note, that secure embed requires each of the viewers of your report to have Power BI Pro license
(or if the workspace where you publish the report has a dedicated capacity assigned, i.e. Power BI Premium or Power BI Embedded, a Power BI Free license).
With RLS, you will include all the data for all tenants in your report, and Power BI will filter it for you, so the user will see only the data relevant for his tenant. This can be made it two ways - define a role for each tenant and include your end users in the corresponding role, or use userprincipalname() DAX function in your report to filter the data based on the current user.
My recommendation is to use RLS, and the benefit in this case is that there will be a single report to embed and no parameters needs to be passed to it from your app at all.
I am new to Power BI and would like to be able to display pre-created Power BI reports in Delphi. I searched on the internet using Google but found little information for Delphi developers, just general information on Power BI. I am using Delphi 10.2.3.
To embed a report, you must authenticate yourself and acquire an access token. It will be used in further calls to Power BI REST API.
Normally, this access token is acquired using ADAL, but I have doubts you will find one for Delphi. You may take a look at this question to see how you can do this using raw web requests in Delphi: How to connect a Delphi desktop app to a third-party Dynamics 365 app using OAuth 2.0?
When you acquired an access token, get the report's embedUrl using Get Report In Group API.
Embedding of Power BI reports is basically loading them in a in a web page. This demo shows you how to embed the report in a WPF application. You can do the same in Delphi. Basically you need to copy powerbi.js, ReportLoader.js and ReportLoader.html files from the demo to your project. The first file is the Power BI client. The second is JavaScript code, which you need to run to load the report in the third one. From your code you need to navigate to ReportLoader.html file and run LoadEmbeddedObject JavaScript function from ReportLoader.js, passing to it the embedUrl of your report, your access token and the Id of the report to be embedded. I can't tell you how to call this function in Delphi, but the WPF demo code may give you some ideas.
Good luck!
Our users authenticate to Acumatica using OAuth2-based SSO with Google as the identity provider. They do not have passwords to access the system (we generate very long, strong passwords which are discarded as soon as SSO is set up).
I don't want to go into all the reasons why SSO is important to us. It's critical, and I'll leave it at that. SSO was a policy and business requirement for us to select Acumatica.
The Report Designer doesn't seem to support OAuth2.
Is there a way we can give users the ability to download the RPX files via the browser, edit them outside the browser, and then upload the changes via the browser, using only SSO credentials?
Also, where can I get the source code to Report Designer? I'd love to see if I can add OAuth2 support myself.
There are 2 types of report in Acumatica:
Standard Reports
Analytical Reports
The links above describe how you can customize these reports using Acumatica Cloud ERP.
You can notice that standard reports have the following limited customization possibility using Cloud ERP:
You can adjust the report settings to meet your specific informational
needs. For example, you can specify sorting and filtering options and
select the data by using report-specific settings—such as financial
period, ledger, and account. You can configure additional processing
settings for each report.
Analytical reports have more customization possibilities through Cloud ERP:
The Analytical Report Manager is a web-based tool for creating and
modifying analytical reports. Users can design and run custom
analytical reports using advanced data selection criteria, data
calculation rules, and customizable report layout design features. By
using the Analytical Report Manager, you can: Create the layout and
structure of reports based on your business requirements. Define data
selection criteria for the report with a high level of granularity.
For example, data sources can include a range of accounts,
subaccounts, and financial periods. Use advanced formulas to calculate
values based on the information extracted from the data source. Create
consolidated reports based on the data from multiple data sources or
other analytical reports. Localize data used by a report if
multilingual support of user input is enabled.
Acumatica marketing material shouldn't refer to the standard report editor (Windows Form Desktop Application) as part of the Cloud ERP product. The reason for this is quite simple, a Windows Desktop application is not a cloud product, it can't be accessed with a browser and is not supported on unix/apple OS.
Analytical reports designer support SSO OAuth since the designer is running on the Cloud ERP product.
Standard reports designer doesn't support OAuth. You could fill a feature request for it though. Our marketing material should not refer to standard report customization as part of the Cloud ERP product because the designer requirements are different.
We strive to make every feature available on Cloud ERP platform. At the moment these are the features not available on Cloud ERP to my knowledge:
Standard Report Editor
DeviceHub, this is a Windows program that acts like a device
spooler so you can access windows desktop hardware like printer
and scales from the Cloud ERP.
Login page customization, this can't be achieved through
Customization Project Editor, you have to change files manually on
the server.
From now on, I'll focus on the Standard Report Designer, the Windows Desktop Application.
The designer uses the Web Service API to communicate with Acumatica Database.
Besides loading and saving RPX files the report designer also uses the Web Service API for features in 'File->Build Schema' dialog like 'Load Schema'. If your user are not using the 'Build Schema' features then having only the RPX file locally should be enough to allow them to modify the report using the designer.
Code for loading and saving RPX files is located in PX.Reports.Design.ReportUtils class which is part of PX.Reports.Design.dll assembly. It's using the SOAP API which to my knowledge is not the preferred API to use OAuth, the REST Contract API is recommended for OAuth enabled Web Services. Refactoring the PX.Reports.Design.dll assembly to use REST Contract API instead of SOAP API isn't trivial.
That said I believe it's possible to load and save RPX files using the Rest API and you could write a wrapper for the report designer to handle that task as long as you forgo 'Build Schema' feature. I'll touch on that at the end of my answer.
You can find the documentation for using OAuth with Rest API here
There are two ways you can use Acumatica Web Service, attended or unattended.
Attended use requires a user to enter his credentials in some form of UI before using the web service. The report designer uses this form of authentication.
The alternative for unattended use is to configure and save the authentication credentials before using the web service. That way an automated program can use web service API without requiring a user sitting in front of the computer.
Unattended use typically doesn't involve OAuth because you can't have a user dedicated to the task of authenticating. For example, if you integrate Acumatica with an ecommerce provider, requiring him to use OAuth authorization to push the orders to Acumatica is problematic because that process usually doesn't involve a UI where a user sitting at the computer provide authorization.
You could technically create a OAuth access token that never (rarely) expires for this task but it circumvents the purpose of OAuth which is having temporary access tokens to mitigate man in the middle attacks. Certifications that mandates use of OAuth typically forbid use of tokens that never expire. That's why requesting OAuth for automated process can raise eyebrows and lead programmers to question your security policies.
Now let's get to possible solutions for your problem. You'll have to assess whether your security policies allows use of unattended web service without OAuth authorization. If that's the case then your job will be much easier. If not then you'll likely run into similar problems later on if dealing with third party web service integration for Acumatica is required.
In order to write a wrapper over the report designer you'll have to write a windows desktop application and have the '.RPS' file type associated with your wrapper instead of being associated with Acumatica report designer.
When a user clicks the EDIT REPORT button on the website, a '.RPS' text file is generated in memory on the server and the user browser is redirected to that file in order to download it locally. When the user clicks on the RPS file, windows launches the associated program (Acumatica report designer) and passes the RPS file path by command line parameter. The report designer then presents the authorization dialog where user can enter his credentials and the report RPX file is downloaded by the Web Service API.
Example of the content of an RPS file:
ServiceUrl|http://localhost/AcumaticaInstance/
ReportName|gl633000.rpx
User|admin
The idea is to have your wrapper parse this RPS file, download the associated RPX file using the Web Service API that comply with your security policy and then launch Acumatica report designer for this RPX file using command line parameter:
"c:\...\ReportDesigner.exe" "c:\...'gl633000.rpx"
When you launch the report designer you want to halt your main thread until the user closes the report designer. Framework methods that do this are typically named 'wait for exit'. Before closing the report designer the user would save the RPX file. After the designer is closed your main thread will resume and you can then re-upload that RPX file to Acumatica database using Web Service API.
The easy way would be to create a report designer user to use Web Service API in unattended mode. You could store those credentials locally (in encrypted form) wherever you see fit and never expose them in UI. When making Web Service call you decrypt those credentials on the fly. In such a scenario the asset to protect is the decryption key.
If use of attended web service is required for OAuth support you will need to implement a UI to get those credentials. If you have to use Google login page for entering the credentials you would have to include an embedded browser in your wrapper for that purpose.
As a remainder, note that this solution will enable you to modify the report definition in the RPX file but will not enable you to use report designer features that require web service API like 'Build Schema'.
I am using Azure Mobile Service as a backend in my Xamarin Andoid App. I want pull data from SQL View not a Table. How to pull data from VIEW, that is possible.?
Thanks a lot
Per my experience, what you want is possible. You can try to define a custom API controller in C# to query the view from Azure SQL Database to render JSON body, then pull data from the custom api on Xamarin Android App.
Please refer to the offical documents as below.
The section How to: Define a custom API controller of the tutorial Work with the .NET backend server SDK for Azure Mobile Apps
The section Work with a custom API of the tutorial How to use the managed client for Azure Mobile Apps
It's actually relatively easy to pull from an SQL View. Check out Chapter 3 of my book at http://aka.ms/zumobook - this goes into detail on how to set up the view. Once the view is defined properly (and matches the model in your code in the backend), it "just works".