Today, I’m excited to announce the General Availability of the Microsoft Power BI publish to web feature. Since public preview in February, thousands of people have used Power BI publish to web to wow their audience, and now we’re making it available to everyone.
With Power BI publish to web we’ve taken all of the powerful tools that data analysts and scientists normally use Microsoft Power BI for and made them available for anyone looking to construct compelling data stories. These tools help enable a deeper look into the data and discover shareable insights. Power BI creates reports that can be as simple as a single visual showing a trend over time, or a comprehensive report that enables audiences to dig deep and explore historical trends.
We want Power BI publish to web to be the simplest part of the journey with your audience. Here are just some of the features available in Power BI publish to web to help with that:
- Same rich authoring tools available for free: Design your report using Power BI Desktop with rich analytics, data mashup, and analytics. Then upload it to PowerBI.com and securely collaborate with your team to refine until you’re ready to publish.
- One-click publish to web: When the report has been finalized, with the click of a button, it can be embedded in your web page or blog.
- Copy and paste the URL: Simply copy and paste the URL of the published report (an iFrame) into a webpage.
- Simple editing: If a report needs further iteration, no problem. Make changes, republish and it will update on the web.
- Elegant, cross-device support: Power BI publish to web automatically manages scaling reports for viewing on desktops and mobile devices. We also provide simple and intuitive controls to help navigate stories. Pick which page of the report should show up first and it will automatically display when the report loads.
- Always up to date: Often the data behind a story changes over time. With Power BI publish to web, data can be refreshed up to once an hour depending on Power BI licensing. These updates can be scheduled and automated.
And best of all – everything we’ve described above is included in the cost of a Power BI license. Our free license provides access to Power BI and enables secure publishing and data refresh at no additional cost. Additionally, Power BI does not impose any limits on the number of times readers can view published reports.
Having said all that, I’d like to share some examples of customers who have published reports in the past few months. The below reports from our customers are great examples of some of the things that have been done with Power BI publish to web:
KING 5 News, an NBC broadcast affiliate based in Seattle, wanted to stay at the forefront of local election coverage. They needed to be able to drill down into the results of Washington state’s presidential primary and share insights county-by-county, as votes were tallied. Additionally, they wanted to display the data live on air and at the same time on their website and mobile apps. Power BI publish to web was integral to helping KING 5 News tell their data story. “This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but it’s never been possible before at the local level, only for the national networks, who’ve spent gobs of money on custom software packages that are well beyond local TV capabilities,” says Peter O’Connell, executive producer for special projects at KING 5 News. You can see the report KING 5 uses and you can also read a case study on the project.
Microsoft Earnings: The Microsoft Investor website publishes earnings releases, financial statements and historical financial information used by shareholders, investors and analysts. It’s business critical for not only Microsoft, but also the financial community, and gets over a hundred thousand visitors from 180 countries a month. “Microsoft Investor Relations uses Power BI to help provide a more visual and interactive way to look at our financial results. Using the new publish to web capability – we’re making interactive views available to any visitor accessing the investor site, using any device,” said Chris Suh, GM Finance, Investor Relations. See reports on the Microsoft Investor Relations site.
Real Sociedad has embarked on a broad transformation focused on using technology to make better decisions. They wanted to give their fans a preview of what is possible. They built a microsite that lets fans see how connected the club is to its province, Gipuzkoa, through the use of data. “At Real Sociedad, Power BI publish to web is helping us to energize our fans and to show our pride in our beloved territory, Gipuzkoa, the cradle of thousands of players and fans of Real,” said Jorge Sanchez, Content Manager. “With this allusion to our province we mark the start of a broad transformation to use Power BI to grow and strengthen our club on and off the pitch.” You can see Real Sociedad’s microsite. Be sure to look for how many Gipuzkoans played for Real, which of them scored the most goals, and how many goalkeepers were born in Irun.
Stetson University, Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness: Communicating enrollment data to a variety of campus audiences with different interests and needs required the Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness to provide a number of different reports. With the implementation of Power BI’s publish to web feature, the Office of Institutional Research & Effectiveness was able to share one enrollment report to all campus constituents via their website. This allowed campus users, as well as prospective students and parents, to explore enrollment data in ways that suited their individual needs. You can see their report.
Centers of Disease Control, R.O.C. (Taiwan): The Centers for Disease Control, R.O.C. (Taiwan) is responsible for ensuring the health of the Taiwanese people. It is critical to ensure the CDC is the source of authoritative data that people can turn to, whether they’re looking for updates on trends or if they’re trying to stay up to date on the CDC’s regulatory activities. Power BI publish to web has enabled the CDC to publish data faster and keep it more up to date. You can see the report the CDC embedded in their website.
Finally, we know the Power BI Community is already telling amazing data stories, building cool examples, and generally showing how awesome they are. So we’re excited to announce the new Data Stories Gallery where anyone can share Power BI publish to web reports with the world. Browse by topics, see featured reports, and contribute examples. Authors who publish to the gallery can share their Power BI Desktop files, making it a great resource to see how the reports were created.
Get started with building a Power BI publish to web report today at https://www.powerbi.com/publishtoweb.
Have a blast!
jono\