Tag: Excel

Power BI

Power BI Publisher for Excel

Publish Excel to Power BI

Update: Publish your Excel (M365) reports to Power BI Service

The Excel Pulisher to Power BI Service is not available as an add-in anymore. It is now a built-in feature within the Excel app itself.

You can now publish your Excel reports directly from the Excel itself into your Power BI Service. Follow the steps below:

1- Click File menu then click Publish
2- Click Publish to Power BI
3- Select a Workspace you’d like to publish the report from the dropdown
4- Click Upload

Publishing Excel reports to Power BI Service

After the report successfully published to your Power BI Service, a yellow message shows up in Excel. You can click the Go to Power BI button.

Go to Power BI after Publishing Excel reports to Power BI from Excel

5- From your Power BI Service, click to open the published Excel report in Power BI Service

Opening a Published Excel report in Power BI Service

6- Select a chart
7- Click Pin
8- Select an Existing dashboard or New dashboard
9- Click Pin

Pinning a chart from an Excel report to Power BI Dashboard

All Done! If you navigate to your Power BI Dashboard, the pinned charts must appear on the dashboard.

Pinned charts in Power BI DashboardIf you’re using the older versions of Excel then continue reading.

It’s been awhile that lots of Excel users were wondering if there is a way to include their Excel elements into Power BI dashboards. With Power BI Publisher for Excel you’re now able to publish snapshots on your important PivotTables, Charts, cell ranges etc. to your Power BI Dashboards. In this post you’ll learn how to get the job done.

How does Power BI Publisher for Excel works?

With the Power BI Publisher Excel you take snapshots of your important insights in Excel and Pin them in Power BI Dashboards.

You need to download and install the Power BI Publisher for Excel from here.

What Excel elements you can/cannot pin?

You can pin almost everything in your Excel worksheet including:

  • A range of cells (from a simple sheet, from a table or a pivot table)
  • Pivot charts
  • Illustrations and images
  • Text

However, you cannot pin 3D Maps or visualisations from Power View.

Note: Although you can pin almost everything from your worksheet to a Power BI Dashboard it doesn’t make sense to pin some elements like Slicers or Timeline filters.

Enabling Power BI Publisher for Excel

The Power BI Publisher for Excel add-in should be enabled by default, however, if for some reason it is not enabled you can manually enable it as below:

Power BI Publisher for Excel 01
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BISM Multidimensional, Business Intelligence - BI, SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS, Uncategorized

Browsing Cubes Remotely from Excel Trough a VPN Connection without Using Windows Authentication

Technically when you connect to another network through a VPN connection you can see all allowed machines on that network. So it is easy to connect to a SQL Server instance using SQL Server authentication. However, I’m explaining this part for some of you guys that might be new to connecting from Excel directly to a database on SQL Server and create flashy reports on Excel.

But, what about connecting directly from Excel to a remote Analysis Services instance without using Windows Authentication? You’re right! I’m saying you can connect directly from your own Excel to a remote SSAS server without using windows authentication. Well, technically there is no SQL Server Authentication mode available for Analysis Services. So what does that actually mean when I say “without using windows authentication”? If you’re interested in finding the answer keep reading this article.

Scenario:

You’re working as a BI consultant, you’ve been told that a client needs to have some simple reports on Excel as follows:

·         You should connect to the client’s server using a provided VPN connection

·         The VPN connection could be established through a Windows VPN, Cisco VPN etc. so the VPN client or the port and protocol used don’t actually matter

·         Microsoft Excel is NOT installed on the client’s server

·         You’re NOT allowed to install Excel on the server

·         As it is a costly process the client will not setup a virtual machine in their network so that you can remotely connect to it and install Excel then connect to their SQL Server/Analysis Services instances

·         There is no trust relationship between your network and the client’s network, so your domain user name and password could not be authenticated on the client’s network

·         The client needs to have some reports on Excel on top of a SQL Server database and OLAP cubes on Analysis Services (SSAS)

·         You have the right to run an application as administrator on the remote server

·         You need to connect to the remote server directly from your own Microsoft Excel installed on your machine

·         The client also provided a remote desktop access to the server

·         On the remote desktop SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is installed

·         In the remote SQL Server your account is a member of the “securityadmin” server role so you can create a new SQL Server Login

Continue reading “Browsing Cubes Remotely from Excel Trough a VPN Connection without Using Windows Authentication” →