This blog post has been edited to include an answer to the comment section about programmatic exports.
As part of continued Power BI innovation, we’re excited to announce support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro at this year’s PASS Data Community Summit. Now Microsoft Power BI customers have the flexibility to create and consume interactive reports as well as paginated reports using Power BI Pro. The new capability will be rolled out gradually over the coming weeks and should be available in all regions by the end of the calendar year.
For the time being, programmatic export of paginated reports using either the exportToFile API or the “Export to File for Paginated Reports” Power Automate connector will remain a Premium-only feature.
Example of an interactive report:
Example of a paginated report:
Paginated reports are traditional operational reports best used for multi-page list-type reports for operational processes like invoicing, catalogs, contracts, bills of lading, etc. with document-like output requirements. One key benefit of paginated reports is that they are programmable which gives report authors more flexibility and control of the structure and formatting of their reports. With this new capability customers have the flexibility to publish a Power BI paginated report to the Power BI service, with either a Power BI Pro license, or a Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license.
We’re excited about the evolution of paginated reports. Features like formatted tables are some of the first steps into bringing a full web authoring experience for paginated reports in the Power BI service. Expect to see incremental paginated report web authoring features every month.
Additionally, to help customers migrate operational reports from SQL Server reporting services to Power BI, there’s a new migration tool as part of SQL Server 2022. The migration tool will be rolling out to previous versions of SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2019 in the coming months.
To learn more, read the documentation on Migrate SQL Server Reporting Services to Power BI. With this migration tool customers can offload their reporting services workloads to Power BI while focusing SQL Server workloads on core business operations.
Speaking of migration, customers using Azure Analysis Services (AAS) can migrate to Power BI Premium and benefit from a superset of functionality. Join the PASS session “Enterprise semantic models in Power BI Premium” to learn how we are making migration from AAS to Power BI Premium easier with a newly released automated migration tool.
Join the Power BI team at the PASS Data Community Summit this year to learn more about paginated reports along with the latest innovations in Power BI! Register today and attend either in-person at the Seattle Convention Center or virtually.
The PASS Data Community Summit is one of the largest gatherings of data platform professionals where DBAs, developers, architects, engineers, IT professionals, analysts and more have the opportunity to connect, share, and learn from the global data platform community.
Come see us in the Microsoft booth to hear experts demonstrate the migration from SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)/Power BI Report Server to Power BI. Also, if you’d like to help shape the future of paginated reports by telling the product team what matters to you, join our focus group session.
Finally, below are just a few of the great sessions that will be delivered by Microsoft and community Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
Sessions and direct links
- Enterprise semantic models in Power BI Premium
- Azure Synapse Analytics and the Power of Datamarts
- Better together: Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics
- Keeping your data fresh in Power BI
- The Hitchhiker’s guide to Adopting Power BI in Your Organization
Please join us in-person or virtual for these great sessions and 100’s more.
See you there!