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Dynamic subscriptions for paginated reports (Preview)

Headshot of article author Michael Bruhjell

21 August, 2023

We’re excited to announce a brand new feature for paginated reports available in Preview – dynamic per recipient subscriptions! This addition is designed to make it easy to distribute a personalized copy of a report to each recipient of an email subscription.

How it works

Imagine a scenario where you have a sales report that needs to be sent to various regional managers, each interested in their respective sales territory. With a report parameterized by sales territory, dynamics subscriptions allow you to send out this report so each regional manager only sees data related to their relevant region. This is done by connecting to a Power BI dataset that defines the mapping between recipients and respective parameters. When it’s time to send out the report, the latest data available in your dataset will determine which regional manager should receive a report in their inbox, and with what parameter(s) applied.

For users familiar with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), this feature is very similar to data-driven subscriptions.

The first step of setting up a dynamic subscription, selecting a Power BI dataset from all datasets which you have permissions to

 

What you’ll need to get started

 

Set up a dynamic per recipient subscription

  1. Navigate to a parameterized paginated report.
  2. Select Subscribe to report from the toolbar, and then select the new Dynamic per recipient (Preview) option in the subscription pane.
    Expanded righthand subscription pane, with the "Dynamic per recipient (preview)" option highlighted
  3. In the first step of setting up a dynamic subscription, select a Power BI dataset that contains your recipient data (i.e., email address, respective parameters).
    The first step of setting up a dynamic subscription, selecting a Power BI dataset from all datasets which you have permissions to
  4. Next, select the columns from your dataset that you want to be varied for each recipient. Email address, email subject, report parameters, and even the attachment format can be set dynamically based on data in a dataset.
    The second step of setting up a dynamic subscription, selecting fields from a Power BI dataset, resulting in a table displaying 3 columns: email, employee name, manager name
  5. You can apply filters and change the method of aggregation by expanding the Filter and Build panes respectively.
    Expanded build and filter panes
  6. On the Email details page, map the column from your dataset that contains email addresses to the Recipients On this page you can also set the name of the subscription, subject, email message, and attachment format. Note, email subject and attachment format can optionally be mapped to a column from your dataset.
    The third step of setting up a dynamic subscription, user can set subscription name, subject, message, option to include link to report, option to include report preview, attachment format, and recipient field mapped to the "email address" column from the Power Bi dataset
  7. Proceeding to the Parameters page, map the columns in your dataset to the corresponding parameters such that each recipient will receive a copy of the report with their respective parameters applied. If you want the same value of a parameter to be applied for all recipients, you also have the option to apply the Current value of the parameter or the Default value.
    The fourth step of setting up a dynamic subscription, there are two parameters (manage name and employee) that are being mapped to columns in the Power BI dataset
  8. On the Schedule page, specify the frequency at which you want this subscription to send. By turning off Active subscription, you have the option of triggering this subscription manually instead of on a recurring basis.
    The fifth step of setting up a dynamic subscription, you can see fields that allow you to pick the recurrence interval (e.g. monthly) as well as the time the subscription should send
  9. The final Review and finish page lets you review the dynamic subscription you just created as well as go back to any step to make changes. Select Save and close to finalize your subscription.
    The sixth and final step of setting up a dynamic subscription, with all previous sections viewable for review, each with a pencil icon that allows user to navigate to that step to make edits
  10. In the subscription pane, you will see this newly created dynamic subscription. You can asynchronously send this subscription to all recipients by selecting Send now.
    Finalized dynamic subscription visible in the righthand subscription pane, with the "Send now" button highlighted

Things to keep in mind

This feature will start lighting up in certain regions as soon as today, but depending on the geography in which your Power BI tenant is located, it may take up to two weeks to appear.

This feature is in Preview, meaning it’s now automatically available for all customers to try and we will be shipping improvements over the coming months. As a Preview feature, it’s not available to customers located in Sovereign Clouds.

The initial limit on number of unique copies of a report per a single dynamic subscription is 50.

Power BI tenant administrators can control whether this feature is available in their tenant, along with standard email subscriptions, with the Users can set up email subscriptions admin setting.

 

Let us know your feedback

We would love to hear your feedback on dynamic subscriptions. What do you like? What can we do to make it better? If we were to extend this feature to Power BI reports, what features would you be looking for? Let us know on ideas.fabric.microsoft.com.