Considerations working with the Power BI/Power Apps solutions integration (preview)
Important
This feature will reach retirement on July 31st, 2024. We recommend removing all Power BI report and dataset components from existing solutions and using a Power BI embedded system dashboard instead.
The integration between Power Apps solutions and Power BI involves behavior in some scenarios that may impact your work. This article describes some of these behaviors.
Sensitivity labels
Sensitivity labels are fully supported in Power BI, but aren't yet fully integrated across the services. Therefore, Power BI won't assign labels to artifacts exported to Dataverse or to content stored in Dataverse. However, any labels applied to artifacts in Power BI are preserved during all Power Apps operations.
Since actions such as exporting a solution or adding a solution involve removing the sensitivity label (if any), these actions will only succeed if the interactive user or the API caller has sufficient usage rights to remove the label as defined by the IT administrators.
Cross-geo operations
Working with Power Apps solutions, you can add Power BI report and semantic model components from Power BI workspaces to a solution. If the report or the semantic model you selected to add to your solution is in a different geography than the Power Apps environment you are trying to move it to, it is called a cross-geo operation. Another example of a situation where cross-geo operations might take place is when the dedicated target environment workspace in Power BI (that was created automatically when the first Power BI component was added to the solution), is not located in the same geography as the Power Apps environment.
The Power BI/Power Apps solutions integration supports cross-geo operations, provided that information sharing between the Power Platform environment and the Power BI workspaces has been enabled.
When you perform a cross-geo operation, before you can complete the operation a banner will alert you to the fact that you're about to move items between geographies. The banner also tells you which geographies are involved. Review the information before proceeding to ensure that the action is compliant with any security and/or data-residency requirements. The following image shows an example of this banner.
Enabling and disabling cross-geo operations
Cross-geo operations are controlled by two feature settings, one in Power BI and the other in Power Platform. The settings in both places must be ON in order for cross-geo operations to take place. The settings are on by default.
For detail about enabling/disabling the setting on the Power BI side, see Power Platform interregional access.
For detail about enabling/disabling the setting on the Power Platform side, see Manage feature settings in the Power Platform documentation and look for the Power BI components setting Allow information sharing between this environment and Power BI workspaces in other geographic regions.
How do I find which geography my Power BI elements are in?
First find which region your Power BI elements are located in. A Power BI workspace is located in the region of the capacity it's assigned to. If the workspace hasn't been assigned to a capacity, its region is the default region of the Power BI tenant. To find the default region of your Power BI tenant, see Find the default region for your organization.
Once you know the region your Power BI element is located in, see the table at Geographic availability for Power Platform to see which geography the region is associated with.
How do I know what geography my Power Apps environment is in?
For Power Apps, the geography of an environment is the geography with the region the environment is located in. See Geographic availability for Power Platform for detail.
Authentication
When Power Platform makers perform any operation related to Power BI, their identities are authorized by policy settings on both the Power Platform and Power BI sides. However, only Microsoft Entra Conditional Access policies related to Power Platform are enforced. This is because maker operations, such as import, export, or adding Power BI components to Power Platform solutions, are implemented through so-called service-to-service communication between Power Platform and Power BI. For solution consumers, conditional access policies are validated for both Power Platform and Power BI as usual.
Private links
When a tenant enables Private Links with Public Access disabled, any operation originating from Power Platform (for example, maker operations, export, import) will be blocked. Consumption operations will adhere to Private link policies as regular operations.
Sovereign clouds
Sovereign clouds aren't supported.
Power BI workspace permissions
When a solution that includes Power BI components is first created or imported in a Power Apps environment, a Power BI workspace dedicated to that environment is created. If you're the one who created or imported the solution, you become an Admin in that dedicated Power BI workspace. You can remove that role for yourself or others in Power BI and only work through the predefined security roles in the Power Apps environment (provided that permissions sync is on), but note the following caveats:
- If there are sync problems, you'll lose access. Not having permissions on the workspace will cause solution import/export/add operations to fail.
- If you delete the Power Apps environment, you'll lose access to the Power BI workspace, and the workspace will become orphaned.
Environment life cycle operations
Environment life cycle operations aren't supported:
Environment life-cycle operations, such as copying or deleting the Power Apps environment, are likely to corrupt the connection to the Power BI workspace and aren't supported. If you perform an environment life-cycle operation, you'll probably have to redo any work that involves Power BI components.
Before deleting the Power Apps environment, make sure to do one of the following to prevent creating an orphaned Power BI workspace:
In Power BI, assign yourself workspace permissions on the dedicated environment workspace.
Delete the dedicated environment workspace in Power BI before deleting the Power Apps environment.