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Power BI Proxy Introduction

The PowerBI Proxy is a web application that allows publishing a PowerBI report with a secret link, and then access it without having to authenticate.

This is similar to the PowerBI "Publish to Internet" feature, with a few differences:

  1. the published link is secret and will not be published to the internet

  2. there are additional features to configure the appearance of your report, e.g.

    1. to hide the filter pane
    2. to show a specific page
    3. to apply filters
    4. to open the report on view mode

  3. there is a feature to allow configuring automatic rotation of reports

Applications

The PowerBi proxy has been designed to support out-of-the-box signage for PowerBI reports. You can connect virtually any device with a browser and display KPIs, dashboards and visualizations on Smart TVs, tablet computers, and visitor terminals.

There are many other applications for the Power BI Proxy, though we advise you to consult with Microsoft to make sure your usage is in line with Microsoft's license terms.

Minimum Requirements

At a minimum, the following is needed to run the Power BI Proxy:

  • a Microsoft 365 tenant
  • a user with a PowerBI Pro license
  • an Azure subscription on the tenant

The running costs of the Power BI Proxy are minimal, and below 1 EUR / month for typical usage scenarios.

Technical Overview

Some of the technology features are:

  • it uses Embed Technology to allow for flexible configuration.
  • it uses OAuth standards to insure security

The PowerBI Proxy is installed on your Azure subscription.

The core component of the Power BI Proxy is a flask web app that provides the following functionality:

  1. it authenticates against Power BI

  2. manages the configurations of the various endpoints

The following Azure ressources are used / needed by the PowerBI Proxy:

  1. Azure Web App on the Azure App Service (the flask app). This can be configured under the Free App Service Plan

  2. An Azure Key Vault, storing the secrets (such as the refresh token)

  3. An Azure App Config, storing the configurations of the various endpoints

  4. An Entra App, allowing authentication with a token

Security

The Power BI Proxy is - by design - less secure then a proper authentication by a user with a user-name and password and MFA (Multi-Factor-Authentication).

However, it is considerably more secure than the "Publish to Internet" feature, which offers no protection at all.