Power BI reports in SQL Server Reporting Services: Feedback on the Technical Preview

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NOTE:  This blog post describes an early Technical Preview of Power BI reports running on SQL Server Reporting Services’s on-premises report server platform. In June 2017, we brought this technology to market as Power BI Report Server. For more info, check out A closer look at Power BI Report Server.

In October at PASS Summit 2016, we released a Technical Preview of Power BI reports in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Since then, we’ve received a ton of enthusiastic feedback. Here’s just some of the feedback we’ve heard so far:

  • The virtual machine with everything you need preloaded – Power BI Desktop, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and even some sample data and reports – makes it really quick and easy to try a new feature like this one.
  • Power BI reports feel natural within the Reporting Services web portal and work just as you’d expect, while Power BI Desktop’s ability to open reports from and save them to a report server feels seamless and supports the iterative process of creating reports.
  • The Comments feature is a welcome addition and a great way to engage in discussions about the insights you uncover in Power BI reports as well as in other reports.

We thank everyone who’s tried the Technical Preview and shared their feedback so far.

In addition to feedback, we’ve received a number of questions, and in today’s post, we thought we’d round up some of the most common ones.

What’s Microsoft’s approach to offering Power BI capabilities in an on-premises solution?

Power BI was designed to be Software-as-a-Service running in Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, while SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) was designed to be an on-premises solution that customers can deploy and manage on their own servers. For customers who need an on-premises solution, as described in our reporting roadmap, we’re investing in the SSRS product and adding support for Power BI reports to SSRS. With this support, you can create a report in Power BI Desktop, publish it to your SSRS report server, and view and interact with it in your web browser.

Which Power BI capabilities do you plan to add to SSRS?

We’re focusing our efforts on adding Power BI reports to SSRS and on supporting the features Power BI Desktop offers for use within these reports, including a variety of data connectors and visualizations. Beyond the current Technical Preview, we plan to add support for

  • Custom visuals
  • Additional data connectors (besides Analysis Services), cached data, and scheduled data refresh
  • Power BI mobile apps (viewing Power BI reports stored in SSRS)

Given our focus on Power BI reports, we have no current plans to add other Power BI features (such as “dashboards,” Q&A, Quick Insights, and others) to SSRS.

What can we expect in the next Technical Preview of Power BI reports in SSRS?

With the current Technical Preview, we used a pre-configured Azure VM to offer you a preview that’s quick and easy to try. Our focus for the next Technical Preview is on a version you can download and install on your own VM or server, a necessary next step toward a production-ready version. Aside from this aspect, the functionality will be similar to the current Technical Preview’s.

When will we have this next Technical Preview?

We’re targeting January 2017 to release this next Technical Preview.

What’s the release vehicle for a production-ready version?

We plan to release the production-ready version in the next SQL Server release wave. We won’t be releasing it in a Service Pack, Cumulative Update, or other form of update for SSRS 2016.

When will we have a production-ready version?

We’re targeting availability in mid-2017.

Can I deploy SSRS 2016 today and migrate to SSRS with Power BI reports when it’s available?

Yes, we aim to make it easy to migrate to SSRS with Power BI reports from SSRS 2016 and previous versions.

How can I participate today?

The best way to participate and help us deliver SSRS with Power BI reports as quickly as possible is to try our preview releases and share your feedback with us:

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2016
    Thanks for details. Any word on licensing and pricing? Would Power BI be available in SQL Server Express with Advanced Services edition (or its free v.Next equivalent)? Or would we need Standard edition and higher?
    • Anonymous
      December 16, 2016
      Hi Vitaly. Licensing and pricing details are to be finalized and published at a later time (historically, just before or at GA).
  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2016
    Thanks for this clarification, especially the hint that it will be vNext.Wondering if R visuals will also be supported?CheersTom
    • Anonymous
      December 16, 2016
      We plan to focus on custom visuals first and collect customer feedback about R visuals, which depend on an R server and which we'll need to investigate further. Thanks for your question!
      • Anonymous
        December 17, 2016
        Hi Riccardo, Can customors do anything to suggest the importance of R visuals?Cheers,Tadas
        • Anonymous
          December 20, 2016
          Absolutely. Simply asking about or expressing interest in R visuals (or any feature, for that matter) gives us a data point, but if you'd like to tell us a little more... Are you using R visuals in Power BI reports today? If so, could you describe the scenario in which you use them? What do they give you that the built-in visuals and custom visuals don't?
  • Anonymous
    December 17, 2016
    Hi I didn't have a chance to try tech. preview so far, so i'm wondering if there will be a possibility to embed a power bi report published on SSRS2016 portal to other web site as it is possible f.e. with mobile report (by using ?rs:=embed option). thanks in advance for answer
    • Anonymous
      December 20, 2016
      Yes, with the Technical Preview, you can embed a report using the rs:Embed=true URL parameter.
  • Anonymous
    December 17, 2016
    So Power BI on premise may be available for earlier versions such 2012?What is the next release wave of SQL Server - SQL Server 2017? What exactly is vNext and how is this different to your other releases?I need to be able to put a business plan for my company as we want to use Power BI on our own servers but it doesn't seem clear what we actually may need to achieve this.
    • Anonymous
      December 20, 2016
      Release waves are cycles during which we develop new features that accrue to a feature release. Previous release waves included SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014, and SQL Server 2016. The next release wave is simply the next one after SQL Server 2016. As for what you'll need, you'll need this next feature release of SSRS (not SSRS 2016 or earlier), but SSRS does work with previous versions of SQL Server Database Engine (including 2012). Hope that helps.
      • Anonymous
        January 11, 2017
        So is it possible to upgrade to the new SSRS version (SSRS 2017 for example) without upgrading our entire SQL Server (which will be SQL Server 2016 within the next few months)? We NEED an on-prem solution, but we are too large to keep upgrading the entire server.
        • Anonymous
          January 18, 2017
          The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    December 19, 2016
    Can you maybe give some more details about the "variety of data connectors"? Will the list of available data connectors be the same as Power BI Desktop supports?
    • Anonymous
      December 20, 2016
      In principle, we'd like to support the same set, but we'll know more once we dig into that work.
  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2016
    Looking forward to the next phase of the technical preview. Is it planned to have an automated (non-gui based) mechanism of deploying the same report to multiple environments (databases)? Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2016
    Hi Riccardo. Thanks for the update well done!!! All our customers are so excited and cannot wait to try out the update! Merry Christmas!
  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2016
    To clarify the scope further, is it planned to add functionality to import Excel files with ranges for reports and Pivot Tables into SSRS Power BI, similarly as the Power BI cloud version has the Excel Online feature to manage and view Excel content, besides the data from Excel files? Thank you
    • Anonymous
      December 20, 2016
      To clarify, you're asking whether you'll be able to store Excel workbooks in SSRS and view them in your web browser? Yes, we plan to support Excel workbooks in this way.
  • Anonymous
    December 22, 2016
    Sorry if this post appears twice, something appeared to go wrong during the first posting.Hello, thanks for the update on this.I have done some experiments with PowerBI Embedded in the past, but have no real experience with SSRS so I have some questions on the supported scenarios.We currently have an Excel/SSAS based setup for reporting.What are the SSRS authentication/authorization options for PowerBI in relation to the data connectors?(e.g. we use SSAS Role based security so there is a relation to how user information is passed along to SSAS to ensure data security).Given the focus on PoweBI reports, have you considered bringing the PowerBI Embedded API to SSRS so we can build on top of that? Or does SSRS have enough flexibility to build custom applications for integration with PowerBI?Lastly, I think putting this feature outside of a SQL2016 update would hinder adoption rate (at least in our case).We heavily depend on a data center that has only just started planning to migrate to SQL2016 in 2017 (we're currently using SQL2012). Thus a vNext version is probably even further away.Can you give some insight in the reasoning behind not putting it in a SQL2016 SP?Thanks very much and happy holidays!
    • Anonymous
      January 27, 2017
      Hi Joroen,Our goal is to have support for the different data authentication options for data sources that you'd have in the service. As for where the feature will come into, the underlying database wouldn't need to be running SQL vNext, just the frontend would need to be running the new version of SSRS to use the new functionality.Thanks,Chris
  • Anonymous
    December 22, 2016
    Thanks for the update. On a different note, are there any plans to have SSRS 2016 as a service in Azure ? Once Analysis Service as a service will go into GA - this will be an obvious question from customers.
  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2017
    HI RicardoDo you know if the next Technical Preview will include support to sqlserver 2012 database engine as datasource? Because needneed to test some preview reports designed in PowerBi desktop with this kind of datasource.Thanks in advance for your information.Marco R.
    • Anonymous
      January 17, 2017
      Hi Marco,We don't have support for any data sources other than SQL Server Analysis Services with Power BI Reports in the Technical Preview currently. We will have support for other data sources, but that will be in a future release.Chris
  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2017
    Will there be any technical preview for SSRS 2016 this month?
    • Anonymous
      January 17, 2017
      Yes, the preview was released today. Here is the blogpost discussing ithttps://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2017/01/17/power-bi-reports-in-sql-server-reporting-services-january-2017-technical-preview-now-available/Chris
  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2017
    Any word on the on Prem technical preview release date for January. We are pushing mid Jan now and doesn't appear to be any word. Just curious if January is still the target or if that has shifted forward?
    • Anonymous
      January 17, 2017
      Hi Matt,This was released today - you can read more in today's blogpost.https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2017/01/17/power-bi-reports-in-sql-server-reporting-services-january-2017-technical-preview-now-available/Chris