Paginated Reports

Paginated Reports are a new type of report available to The University. They are designed to be printed or shared and they are formatted so that all data in a table can be displayed or printed rather than only the information in the current view as is the case in regular Power BI reports.

Paginated Reports

 

Summary

Paginated reports are designed to be printed or shared. They're called paginated because they're formatted to fit well on a page. They display all the data in a table, even if the table spans multiple pages. They're also called pixel perfect because you can control their report page layout exactly. Power BI Report Builder is the standalone tool for authoring paginated reports for the Power BI service.

Paginated Reports can be scheduled to email reports to users via Subscriptions to your report. Please note that you should consider data security when setting this up as emailing data means it is moved out of the service and becomes much harder to restrict access to. The intended audience should be the only people that receive these and those people should be aware of data protection policies.

If you want to create Reporting Dashboards with strong visuals and ease of use then regular Power BI Reports would be the best option. However, if you need to display and print lots of rows of data in a table then you could consider using Paginated Reports.

 

Software

Paginated Reports are created using different software compared to regular Power BI reports. This software is called Power BI Report Builder and it can be obtained via the link below. Note that this is a Microsoft owned application and IS do not manage or support it. If you experience any issues with it, it is recommended that you download the latest version and then contact IS Helpline if you require further assistance. 

Power BI Report Builder

 

Paginated Report requirements

In order to make full use of Paginated Reports you should have the following:

  • A Power BI Pro Licence to be able to publish content (this is not required for creating reports)
  • Access to the Workspace you wish to publish to (or ability to create a new Workspace with a Pro Licence)
  • The Power BI Report Builder software (link above)

 

Data Sources for Paginated Reports

Paginated Reports use different Data Sources to regular Power BI Reports, some of which are listed here. 

  • Azure SQL Database and Azure Synapse Analytics (via Basic and oAuth)
  • Azure Analysis Services (via SSO)
  • SQL Server via a gateway
  • Power BI datasets
  • Oracle
  • Teradata

Please check Microsoft's pages for a full list of Data Sources that can be used in Paginated Reports.

Supported Data Sources for Paginated Reports

 

Please Note

In general it is more secure to host your reports in the Power BI service itself and restrict access to them there. This can be done using regular Power BI Reports and Power BI Desktop software or Paginated Reports and Power BI Report Builder software if needed.  Please consider data security and your reporting requirements before using export / printing features of Paginated Reports.

 

Paginated Report Training

Microsoft offer a Power BI Paginated Reports in a Day course that we would recommend you complete before using this feature. 

Paginated Reports in a Day course

 

Further information on Paginated Reports is available from Microsoft.

Paginated Reports in Power BI

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