Despite the widespread prevalence of the cloud, some businesses still rely on on-premise solutions to store and maintain their data assets. Microsoft introduced its latest Power BI tool, known as the Power BI Report Server, exclusively for on-premise infrastructures. Power BI Report Server empowers these businesses to reap the benefits of Power BI and visualize their data in a clear and efficient manner.
The Power BI Report Server allows these organizations to present data reports and KPIs entirely on-premises. In addition, it enhances collaboration with other users or teams within the organization. Many organizations find it safer to host their essential data and reports within the limits of the local domain network and in a secure place such as the Power BI Report Server.
The following is an examination of the components, features, installation process, advantages, and limitations of the Power BI Report Server. By the end of this article, you will understand why Power BI Report Server is the right choice for your business.
What is Power BI Report Server?
Power BI Report Server is an on-premise version of the Power BI Desktop application for businesses that prefer to maintain their data on their servers. It is built upon SQL Server Reporting Service’s (SSRS) architecture. It allows the end-users to host, display, and manage multiple types of reports, such as Power BI reports, paginated reports, mobile reports, and KPIs. Once generated, the end users can access these reports through various web browsers, mobile devices, or as an email.
What are the components of the Power BI Report Server?
These are two significant components of the Power BI Report Server: the Web Portal and Power BI Reports.
Web Portal – As a crucial component, the web portal comprises all the required Power BI reports, mobile reports, paginated reports, KPIs, and Excel workbooks. It hosts and displays them on the Power BI Report Server, and end-users can access these reports and KPIs via all the latest browsers. The web portal performs various activities: provide access to on-demand reports, subscribe to published reports, apply personalized branding to the web portal, and schedule report processing. These different types of reports are organized and grouped in a traditional folder hierarchy and can be accessed as a separate file or folder.
Power BI Reports – Another critical component of the Power BI Report Server is Power BI Reports which are multi-paged informative files that depict a data model through visualizations. Power BI Desktop provides various visualization options and helps you build the report. With Power BI Reports, one can have more than one page with any number of visualizations needed. Once created on a Power BI Desktop, the reports are published on the web portal for the teams to access and use it. These reports provide the crucial information required to make important business decisions.
There are two additional types of reports hosted on the Report Server.
Paginated Reports
A paginated report is a well-structured, document-style page-to-page report often saved as paged documents. The end user can expand the document both vertically and horizontally to view the entire data without compromising the quality of the report. These reports come in handy when printing a report from a PDF or Word file.
Mobile Reports
Mobile reports are server-hosted and shared on the web portal. These reports are similar to the Power BI reports but are adaptable and optimized for the mobile screen. It allows the users to select, reorder, and reformat the reports. With this, mobile users can create impressive and easy-to-read report page views on the go.
Power BI Report Server Features
Key features of the Power BI Report Server are as follows:
- Share reports and collaborate with other users and teams
- Deploy and use mobile reports (.rsmobile), paginated reports (.rdl), and KPIs
- 100+ custom visuals to choose from
- Connect and access reports through Power BI Mobile
- Supported by iOS, Android, and Windows mobile platforms
- Allows cross-filtering, tooltips, slicers, data exploration, and others
- Transfer data from reports hosted on a Report Server to a CSV format file
The installation process of the Power BI Report Server
The following is the step-by-step procedure to install Power BI Report Server:
- Locate the installer file named PowerBIReportServer.exeLaunch
- Click: Install Power BI Report Server
- Select the preferred edition and click the Next button
- Read and accept the terms and conditions, and then click Next.
- Ensure a SQL Server instance with Database Engine installed before you configure Power BI Report Server Database.
- Choose the location of installation and click Install to continue.
- After completing the setup, click Configure report server.
Advantages of Power BI Report Server
The Power BI Report Server has numerous advantages to host and present reports. The most important benefit is its compatibility and easy integration with the existing reporting services. In addition, Power BI Report Server is highly secure, which makes it the most preferred and reliable on-premises solution to visualize reports.
Power BI Report server has interactive features, and the reports can host, share, and collaborate within the user organization’s firewall. Other advantages of the Power BI Report server include:
On-premises: Enable businesses with on-premise infrastructure to reap the business and technology benefits of using Power BI.
Framework for SSRS: User organizations can transfer reporting assets such as paginated reports, mobile reports, and KPIs to the SSRS Framework.
Power BI Reports: deployment of Power BI Reports makes it the right choice for organizations to establish both an on-cloud and on-premises BI architecture and model through visualizations.
Why Choose PreludeSys?
Power BI dashboards give businesses a better understanding of their data. PreludeSys is a Microsoft gold partner and a reliable Power BI implementation expert that will help you structure, organize, and visualize your data by leveraging Power BI. Our team of highly experienced, certified experts deploys Power BI models (both on-premise or in the cloud) to assist businesses with their requirements and operational efficiency.
To learn more about the Power BI Report Server and for a smoother implementation, get in touch with us!
