Today we’re excited to announce the new Power BI embedded analytics playground. The new playground is the home for Power BI embedded analytics, where you can get hands-on coding experience, embed your own reports, and interact with our client APIs to see instant results. In addition, you’ll find there our interactive showcases to get inspiration regarding how you can apply these features in your applications. Lastly, we’ve created a new learning center to help you find all the relevant samples, tutorials, and documentation you’ll need for a successful integration.

Try it all out for yourself in the Power BI embedded analytics playground now!

The playground in detail

The playground has a home page and three main experiences: Developer sandbox, Explore our APIs, and Showcases. Additionally, it has a dedicated learning center for embedded analytics. In the following sections we’ll go into the purpose of each of the experiences mentioned above.

Home

In the playground home, you’ll find all the different experiences the playground has to offer. You’ll also find information on how to get up and running with Power BI embedded analytics, some videos that can help you get the most out of your integration, e-guides, and links to the latest blog posts that will help you stay up to date with all the latest updates.

Developer sandbox

The developer sandbox is our special place for developers. There you can get hands-on experience with our client APIs. You can start using the APIs with our sample report, and when you get the hang of it, you can bring in your own report. To embed your own report in the developer sandbox, select the Select report button on the start dialog. After signing in, you’ll choose the workspace and the report you’d like to embed.

Select a report dialog on the playground

After selecting one of the options in the start dialog, you’ll see the code editor and the embedded report on the right, and the names of the client API code snippets on the left. To start interacting with our APIs, simply drag and drop a code snippet from the left pane to the code editor area and click the Run button.

Developer sandbox drag and drop experience

After adding a code snippet, you’ll see the code snippet parameters highlighted in yellow. These are the parameters that we recommend you change.

Code snippets parameters marked in yellow

Note: When bringing in your own report, you must change these parameters to match your report’s metadata.

Alternatively, you can add APIs to the code editor area using the keyboard only. To do this, start typing the name of the code snippet (as displayed in the left pane) and press Enter, the code snippet will be added to the code editor and you’ll be able to use Tab to move between the code snippet parameters. To run the code using your keyboard, press Alt+Shift+Enter. To see more keyboard shortcuts, click the Shortcuts button in the upper right corner.

Add API using keyboard and run the code

Note: You can’t embed a different report by changing the access token, embed URL, report ID and token type parameters. To embed a different report, make sure you have access to it and use the Select report option.

Explore our APIs

If you’re looking for a place where you can explore our client APIs and see what kinds of things you can embed other than reports, this experience is for you. You can simply interact with a code snippet by clicking on it in the left pane and it will run immediately.

Run a set page code snippet on explore our APIs

If you’re using a code snippet whose result is not visible on the report itself (for example, Get visuals), you’ll find the result in the log.

Show the log pane on the explore our APIs

In the Explore our APIs experience you can also change which sample (report, dashboard, or Q&A) you’re embedding. You can embed the sample Power BI report in view, edit or create mode, and even switch between mobile and desktop views.

Show the different report view modes and mobile layout

When you hover the mouse over one of the code snippets, or navigate to a snippet using the keyboard, you’ll find an info button and a More options (…) menu that lists additional commands. These buttons are also available on the developer sandbox experience.

If you select the info button, you’ll see a short description of the code snippet. With the additional commands under the More options (…) menu, you can open the code snippet in the developer sandbox, show the code, explore the showcase (if there is one), and learn more about the API.

Additional commands menu

Showcases

Our showcases give you an opportunity to experience our client APIs in action. Each showcase presents an application that demonstrates what you can achieve with one or more of the client APIs.

Showcases gallery and the showcases themsleves

The showcases code is open-sourced, and you can find the code behind all of them in our GitHub repository.

Learning center

If you’re looking for Power BI embedded analytics resources, check out the Learning Center. Here you can dive into our documentation, learn about our APIs, find our developer samples and videos, and learn where to get help.

We hope the playground experience will make it easier for you to learn, explore and try out Power BI embedded analytics.

We greatly appreciate any feedback, so we can continue to improve the playground. Try it out, and if you have any feedback, please let us know through this survey.

Microsoft Power BI Updates Blog

Announcing the new Power BI embedded analytics playground (preview)