Can I use Power BI with tRS?

• Power BI Desktop is free and easy for users to connect to but content can not be shared

• Power BI Service is where content can be shared and not supported by tRS

• For the following reasons, tRS recommends Portal Interactive Editions as the alternative

  • Cost

  • Performance

  • Usability

• Options for clients thinking about Power BI

  • Portal Interactive Editions

  • Scheduled outbound integration file for lighter dashboarding in Power BI

  • Client funded integration project LEAD and funded by the CLIENT/CONSULTANT

Overview

Over the years, tRS and clients have investigated pilots leveraging Power BI including large scale projects involving third party specialists.  The projects all tend to start the same with an individual or small group of biased individuals who want to use Power BI to query tRS Cubed and build dashboards to share with team members. 

Whilst it is easy and technically feasible for an individual to use Power BI Desktop to query their tRS Cubed, it is a completely different conclusion using Power BI Service and sharing content with others. 

Power BI Service integrations involve custom authentication and security steps that can only be managed and owned by the client and third party consultants. tRS can work with consultants based on their clear specifications and requirements but we can not play a consulting or leading role as we normally do.

Power BI Service integrations are not supported by tRS

Every project tRS has run with clients on Power BI Service integration ended in the same outcome- it is simply commercially unviable. The proven concerns (listed below) have led tRS to flag Power BI integrations as unsupported;

• Cost Prohibitive – as side from additional license fees, additional hardware, additional monitoring is required not to mention incremental third party specialists (consulting fees) will be required to design and implement the security set up and maintenance environment for users.  On top of this is the time/cost of report builders spending time to create, tweak and publish their content and train users.  These expenses are pure overhead / redundant as the client users already have access to the tRS Cubed through Excel and Pivots along with the Portal for creating and publishing dashboards to teams with included support.
• Performance – running Power BI Service queries against tRS Cubed incurs significant overhead that consumes massive resources from poorly optimized relatively tiny queries.  This has led to poor end user experience and instability of Power BI Reporting. In addition, it is not possible to cache common and popular queries like we do in the portal leading to slow speeds and high drain on resources.
• Usability – whilst it is very easy to build your first dashboard by dragging and dropping visualisations onto a report page, it is also too easy for components to be incorrectly linked, built without global selections that define the companies common standards and lack helpdesk support to trouble shoot leading to inaccurate reporting, user frustration and fragmented unsupported reporting.

So what are the options available?

• Option 1 - Portal Interactive Editions
  Template Manager or Enterprise Edition is a full report builder license that empowers report builders to create and share reports and dashboards with teams via the portal connected directly to their tRS Cubed solution.  There are over 30 component types from image cards to rich text box, grids and graphs.  This is being further enhanced in Q1 25 to include Professional Edition – ability to copy, edit and share reports with team members – (great for MAC users) and Personal Edition, ability to save multiple tailored views for the individual.
• Option 2 - Concierge CSV extract file
  This is a scheduled extract that can be easily consumed by third party BI applications and devices.  This obviously has limitations in terms of the degree of detail in reports and creates fragmented reporting channel that will end up frustrating users.  It is perhaps a good solution for lighter management dashboard consumers. However, this content can be easily delivered via the current tRS Solution.
• Option 3 - Client funded project
  If the client elects to push through the above concerns and bypass the two alternative options above, they can engage with a third party consultancy to pursue a customized service environment.  This solution would also incur additional tRS fees to work directly with the consultant who will be responsible in providing the necessary technical specifications for authentication, platform set up, design and build. Along with providing the client with continual maintenance, training, documentation and support of the solution.