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Eddy Odhiambo
Eddy Odhiambo

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A Practical Guide to Publishing and Embedding Power BI Reports with IFrames

#analytics #beginners #microsoft #tutorial

A step-by-step beginner-friendly walkthrough for publishing a Power BI report and embedding it on a website portal.

Power BI is one of those tools that feels simple at first, then becomes very powerful as soon as you start sharing your work with other people. Building the report is one part of the process. Making it accessible and useful to others is the real final step.

In this guide, I will walk through how to:

  • Create a Power BI workspace
  • Upload and publish your .pbix report
  • Generate an embed link (iframe)
  • Add the report to a public to make it accessible by others

Why publishing matters in Power BI

Creating visuals in Power BI Desktop is useful, but reports become more impactful when they can be accessed by others. Publishing gives your report a home in Power BI Service, where it can be viewed, shared, and embedded into a website.

If you only keep reports in Desktop:

  • Access is limited to the local machine
  • Collaboration is hard
  • Stakeholders cannot view updates easily
  • There is no web link for presentation or portfolio use

Publishing solves all that by moving your report to the cloud and giving you options to share it safely.

What you need before starting

Before you begin, make sure these are ready:

  1. A Power BI account (work or school account, depending on your setup)
  2. A finished .pbix file that has the dashboards and reports
  3. Access to Power BI Service at https://app.powerbi.com
  4. A GitHub account (for hosting the website and uploading the .pbix file)
  5. Your report iframe code gotten from Power BI Service site

Step 1: Creating your workspace

In Power BI Service, workspaces are like project rooms where reports and dashboards live.

How to do it

  1. Open https://app.powerbi.com
  2. On the left sidebar, click Workspaces
  3. Click New workspace and give it a preferred name and description of your liking

workspace creation

This step matters because it keeps your work, reports and content organized

Tip: Keep the workspace name professional and clear, for example North America Region - Sales Reports.

Step 2: Uploading and publishing your reports

Now you need to place your .pbix file in the workspace so it can be opened in the browser. We are already assuming you have the report and dashboard report ready as a .pbix file

Option A: Publish directly from Power BI Desktop (recommended & faster)

  1. Open your report in Power BI Desktop
  2. Click Publish from the menu options in top bar

publishing workspace 1

  1. Choose the workspace name you created above
  2. Wait for the success confirmation

Option B: Upload from Power BI Service

  1. Open the target workspace in Power BI Service
  2. Click Import or New > Report or Workbook > From this Computer

publishing workspace 2

  1. Select your Reports/Dashboard .pbix file
  2. Wait for import completion

What to check after upload

  • The report appears under the workspace content
  • The dataset/model is visible
  • Opening the report shows all visuals correctly

Your report should display like this:

published report

Step 3: Generating the embed code (iframe)

Once your report is in Power BI Service, you can generate code that lets the report appear inside a web page.

How to generate iframe embed code

  1. Open the report in Power BI Service
  2. Click File or Share (depends on UI version)
  3. Look for Embed report or Publish to web
  4. Choose the appropriate embed option
  5. Copy the generated <iframe ... ></iframe> code

If prompted, confirm that you understand visibility settings.

embedding report

Important note on privacy

There are different embedding methods in Power BI:

  • Publish to web: public access, good for portfolio/demos, not for sensitive data
  • Secure embedding/organization methods: for internal/private use

Always confirm data is safe to make public before using it.

Now that you have the iframe lik, you can share it with your developer or add it yourself to the index.html file of your public site for others to view.

You can use a clean layout with a heading, short description, and responsive iframe container.

Common issues and how to fix them quickly

1) Report not showing on website

Possible causes:

  • Wrong iframe copied
  • Embed permission not set

Fix:

  • Re-copy iframe from Power BI Service
  • Check on the permissions applied and confirm if accurate
  • Refresh with hard reload

2) Blank area where report should appear

Possible causes:

  • Browser blocked mixed content
  • Iframe width/height too small

Fix:

  • Ensure https is used
  • Set iframe width to 100% and enough height (700px+)

3) Wrong workspace or missing report

Possible causes:

  • Uploaded to a different workspace
  • Report upload failed silently

Fix:

  • Confirm workspace name
  • Re-upload the .pbix file and wait for completion

That's all you need to publish and embed your POwer BI Dashboards and Reports online, easy as 123

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