Don't Keep Your Dashboard a Secret ; A Guide to Embedding and Publishing Power BI Reports

Introduction

Think of your Power BI report as a movie. Creating it is just production the real magic happens when people can actually watch it. How do you show it off without sending everyone a dozen screenshots? Well that's where Publishing and Embedding comes in to get your dashboard onto the big screen, whether that's a website, an app, or your organization's portal.
It's time to let your report out into the world, whether you want to share it on a website, embed it into an application, or make it accessible to your team, this step-by-step guide will walk you through the entire process of publishing and embedding your Power BI reports. By the end, you'll know exactly how to make your dashboards interactive, accessible, and ready for your audience, no more screenshots required.

Here are a couple of terms that will be mentioned in this article, feel free to skim through them.

Power BI Desktop ; A free Windows program you install on your computer. Used for building reports. You connect to data, clean it, and make charts.

Power BI Service ; A website in the cloud (Power BI service) Used for Sharing your reports with your team.

Publishing ; Publishing is the initial step where you upload a report from Power BI Desktop to the cloud (Power BI Service).

Embedding ; Embedding is the secondary step of taking that published report and displaying it directly inside an external website, portal, or custom application

What you will need before you start:

1. Power BI Desktop App

2. Power BI Pro or Premium license (for secure sharing)

3. VsCode or any other editor

4. Website, SharePoint, Teams, or application for embedding (optional)

1. Publishing Report

Publishing Power BI Desktop reports to the Power BI Service enables online access and collaboration. The steps below explain how to complete this process efficiently.

step 1 : Create an account in Power BI service

step 2 : Create a workspace in Power BI service to hold your project e.g I created one named 'Maji Ndogo'

step 3 : On your Power BI Desktop click on the Publish button in the Home Tab

step 4 : Sign in to Power BI using your email address used in the Power BI Service.

Note: Power BI only accepts work or organizational email IDs (e.g., @gfg, @iiitu.ac.in) public emails like Gmail or Yahoo cannot be used.

step 5 : Select a Workspace, in which you want to publish your report, and click on the select button.

step 6 : Now the report is being published to the Power BI online service. It may take some time to finish.

step 7 : The report has successfully been published to the Power BI online service. Click on the Open '.pbix' in Power BI to open the report under online service.

step 8 : The report is successfully shown in the Power BI online service.

2. Embedding Reports

Embedding allows you to integrate the report into your application, website, or portal. This allows end-users to analyze data without leaving their familiar workflows or logging into the external Power BI service

step 1 : Open your published report, navigate to the file option and hover over the option “Embed Report”.

step 2 : Select the embedding options
You can select the embedding option according to your requirement. After selecting an option, you’ll see a link to embed in your website and an HTML tag of your report which you can embed in your code. Below is the embedding option for websites and portals.

step 3 : Copy the HTML code.
step 4 : Run the HTML using VsCode or any other editor

Here is a dashboard we have embedded on our website:

Conclusion

Just like that, you can share your powerBi reports. Publishing and embedding reports in Power BI democratizes your data by transitioning static files into dynamic, cloud-based experiences. It bridges the gap between raw analysis and actionable business insights, allowing stakeholders to easily access, filter, and consume live data directly within their daily workflows.