Prerequisites;
- A Vision license
- A Power BI Pro Account
In this guide we will cover the following aspects of using Power BI with Vision;
- Licensing Requirements Vision and Power BI
- Sharing the Dashboards/Reports and how to handle Permissions
- Obtaining API Keys
See also: How to use Power BI with Vision and How to use oData with Bromcom.
Licensing Requirements (Vision and Power BI)
Vision is used to view and access data across multiple Schools, so at least one of these accounts is required.
The Vision license is included for our One Stop Shop customers, if you are not a One Stop Shop Customer the license can be purchased separately by emailing enquiries@bromcom.com.
A Power BI Pro account will be needed for users to download the Vision Analytics Pack and share reports they have created with others. A user with a non Pro Power BI account can create their own Reports using the OData feed but will not be able to download the Vision Analytics Pack or share reports with other users.
If you want each School to have a customised view of the Data, then one Power BI Pro account would be required per School.
Sharing the Dashboards/Reports and how to handle Permissions
One of the benefits of Power BI is that it allows for flexible access.
A Power BI account is not required to setup Vision users with restricted access. But Setting up restricted user accounts in Vision IS a prerequisite for restricted access to Vision Analytics Pack (Power BI).
Within Vision, you have the ability to restrict how much specific users can see.
To do this, you must have a Power BI Pro Account, and the user you want to restrict must have a regular Power BI Account.
Ideally, your Trust/School will have a Vision and Power BI Lead, who will set-up the Power BI PRO account on behalf of the school (with the restricted access appropriate to the school).
The School administrator decides whether to either;
- Use a single shared account so that every Vision user sees the same Power BI reports.
- Or individual accounts, then the Power BI reports can be customised on a school-by-school basis as described earlier.
To choose shared or individual go to Admin > Power BI Configuration and choose either Use individual accounts or Use shared account.
After you have made your selection, if you would like to specify access per account, go to Admin > Users.
Select the user you would like to edit the permissions for using the tick box on the left, and click Edit.
Then within the Schools section choose which Schools data you would like them to have access to by selecting or deselecting the schools using the tick boxes.
If a School were to only have one Power BI Pro account shared across all of its users, each of them will see the exact same settings.
The Vision Analytics Pack, or any of the Trust’s bespoke Power BI reports can be viewed within Vision using Reporting>Power BI Viewer. Doing this means that the Vision user does not have to log into another service to see the Power BI reports.
Obtaining API Keys
An API key is required PER Power BI Pro account.
To obtain the API Key, the Vision Administrator will need to access the Microsoft Power BI Dashboard (Microsoft Website) and sign in with the School Microsoft Account.
For Schools who are using a shared account, the API Key would be the same for all.
If the Trust only needs one view of the Power BI dashboards, only one API Key is needed (from the admin user account).
For Schools where there are more than one Power BI Pro account, they would require separate API Keys. The Vision Administrator for the School would need to obtain these via Vision.
If multiple restricted views of the Power BI reports are required for multiple schools, then an API Key is required from each of the restricted users that have been created in Vision (one for each school).