Data Classification in Power BI

Power BI Data ClassificationIn many corporations depending on the type of data is being used there could be different types of the sensitivities that should be applied to that data. Data Classification fulfills in Power BI Service this matter very easily. In today’s post you’ll learn how to setup Data Classification in Power BI Service.

First of all I want to inform you that Data Classification is NOT a sort of security or privacy setting. It is only a TAG which is all about informing Power BI users across a corporation to take extra care when they want to share data with other people inside or outside of that corporation. For instance some data might be OK to be shared externally outside the company, but, the other data might not be shared with groups of people even within that corporation.

Depending on your corporation you might have different levels of sensitivity like

  • High Sensitive Data
  • Medium Sensitive Data
  • Low Sensitive Data

So depending on what level of sensitivity, for instance for High Sensitive Data, the Power BI users should be really careful of who they share Power BI Dashboards and data with. In Power BI Service we can easily setup data classification on our dashboards so anyone who is looking at that dashboard is able to understand how sensitive that dashboard is and who they can share it with.

Requirements

To be able to setup Data Classification in Power BI Service you have to:

In case that you want to add another admin user,and if you already integrated your on-premises Active Directory with Azure Active Directory (AD) then you can either grant necessary admin rights to that user from your Azure portal in Azure AD or directly from Office 365 Admin Centre.

The user needs to be an Office 365 “Global Administrator” to be able to setup data classification in Power BI Service. A global administrator will have access to “Admin Portal” panel within Power BI Service which includes data classification and many more other important settings.

Make a User Global Administrator in Office 365

After you signed into your Power BI Service account,

  • Click “Admin” tile from the app launcher

Office 365 Admin Centre

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SSRS 2016 and Power BI

SSRS 2016 and Power BI

Without a doubt SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is one of the most powerful reporting tools for several years. There are tons of features that you can use to make a report that suits your customers’ needs. Despite programmability and extensibility are key strengths of Reporting Services platform when it comes to creating dashboards, SSRS has absolutely nothing to offer as SSRS is a report authoring tool. So it never supposed to offer dashboards. In old days we could create web parts in SharePoint or we could install Performance Point and include SSRS reports in Performance Point dashboards. But, setting up and implementing dashboards in SharePoint/Performance Point was always a painful job. Happily with the new version of SQL Server 2016 we are able to pin visuals from existing on-prem SSRS reports to a Power BI dashboard. In this article I explain how SSRS 2016 and Power BI integration works.

Requirements

When you meet the above requirements you can pin visuals from existing SSRS reports to Power BI or you can create brand new reports and pin the visuals to Power BI.

Note: You can only pin report visuals to Power BI that means you won’t be able to pin tables and matrix to Power BI.

Note: If you don’t want to install the developer edition of SQL Server 2016 OR for any reason you cannot use the developer edition, don’t worry, the functionality I’m going to explain is available in other editions of SQL Server 2016. Indeed, the only editions that doesn’t support SSRS integration with Power BI are “Express Edition” and ” Express with Tools” editions. Check this out for more information.

Register SSRS with Power BI

After installing SQL Server you need to configure Reporting Services. As configuring Reporting Services is out of scope I leave it to you.

Note: At the time of writing this article I was using SQL Server 2016 CTP3. The same principles apply to SQL Server 2016.

  • Open “Reporting Services Configuration Manager”
  • Enter the “Server Name” and “Reporting Services Instance” then click “Connect”

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