We’re all familiar with dynamic subscriptions, also known as “report bursting.” In Report Server, for example, it has long been possible to distribute user-specific reports. A report is then dynamically filtered and sent to, say, the sales managers. They receive only the data that is relevant to them.
This was already possible—albeit indirectly—using the Power BI Service. Dennis wrote an article about it earlier: Report Bursting with Microsoft Power BI Reports. This is now also available (in preview) for paginated reports in the Power BI Service.
Subscriptions
There are several ways to subscribe to a report. We’re already familiar with subscriptions from Reporting Services, of course, but they’re also available by default in Power BI Report Server. You can subscribe to a report so that it’s sent via email or saved to a share. In terms of format, you can choose from options such as:
- Excel
- Word
- PowerPoint
- CSV
- XML
Incidentally, in the Power BI Service, a report can only be emailed and cannot be saved. For additional functionality, you can use Power Automate, as Dennis described earlier in his blog. This functionality now also works with a Premium Per User license.
Supplies
To create a dynamic subscription, you need a paginated report with one or more parameters. These parameters are populated later, during the subscription configuration, using the list of recipients. Note that the parameter does not have to be an email address; it can also be any other field used for filtering.
With a subscription, you can sign up for a report in various ways.
Currently, the preview feature is only available if you have a Premium Capacity, Fabric Capacity, or Fabric Trial subscription.
Create a Dynamic Subscription
When creating a subscription for a paginated report, you can choose between a standard subscription and a dynamic subscription, after which a user-friendly wizard will launch to guide you through the process of creating the subscription.
After selecting the dynamic subscription, you can create a list of recipients from an existing dataset. This list can also be enriched with data used as parameters for the report or data that can be included in the email sent to the recipients.
When composing the email and selecting the parameters, you can choose fields from the data defined in the previous step, after which you can schedule the subscription. Creating the subscription is otherwise very simple and intuitive.
Conclusion
The dynamic subscription is a great addition to the functionality within the Power BI Service. For certain purposes, this feature is often desirable. It’s a shame that the feature isn’t yet available with the Premium Per User license, but perhaps it will become available there in the future. As an alternative, the solution via Power Automate is still useful.
