Carousel Cloud and Power BI

General Player Behavior

• Power BI bulletins will display across all Carousel Player types, but their specific playback behavior is described in this player feature matrix.

• The complexity and density of your reports will affect the bulletin loading time on certain player types with limited processing capacity. Keeping your reports simple will help with longer loading times and underpowered players.

Note for Brightsign Players

• Microsoft implemented a change in Power BI that requires a newer version of Chromium to display live reports on BrightSign Players. BrightSign is working on a firmware fix for Series 4 and Series 5 players. This is the BrightSign support article with additional information.

Power BI Setup Process (Condensed)

The following 3 steps are a condensed version of the required actions to get your app registration set up in Entra/Azure, the correct permissions configured in Power BI, and add the Power BI external authentication in Carousel Cloud.

1. Entra/Azure

   1. Create an app registration (AKA service principal)

   2. Create a client secret for the app registration

      1. Copy to clipboard or password vault after creation for later use in Carousel Cloud

2. Power BI

   1. Enable the option for 'Service principal can use Fabric API's' in Power BI settings menu

   2. Allow at least the service principal, if not the entire organization, the ability to 'Embed content in apps' in the Tenant settings>Developer settings

   3. Make the service principal from Entra/Azure either a member or admin of the workspace/s you want to display in Carousel Cloud

3. Carousel Setup

   1. Final steps are located under ‘Setup External Authentication’ in the article posted below

Power BI Setup Process (Expanded)

Set Up Microsoft Entra ID

To set up an External Authentication for Carousel and Power BI, register Carousel as an Application and create a service principal in Microsoft Entra ID. Then, get these three pieces of information from it:

• Tenant ID

• Client ID

• Client Secret

First, use this article to create a service principal in Microsoft Entra ID. You must have adequate access; please see your admin for details.

Once you have created it, you will need to create a Client Secret following these instructions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity-platform/quickstart-register-app?tabs=client-secret#add-credentials

You can only view and copy the secret while you are creating it. It is a good idea to stash it somewhere because you can’t access it afterward.

The Client ID and Tenant ID can be found in the Overview section of your App Registration. The Tenant ID we are looking for is listed as “Directory (tenant) ID”, and the Client ID is listed as “Application (client) ID”:

Configure Power BI

Tenant Settings

Now that you have a service principal, you must give it API access. You must follow Step 6 of this article to allow Carousel to access the Power BI API. If you use Microsoft Fabric, the Admin Portal can be found in the settings after logging in to https://app.Power BI.com/.

You can grant API access to a specific security group. Just make sure your service principal is in the group.

Workspace Access

You will now need to give the service principal permission to access the Power BI workspaces from which you would like to display reports. Select Access in your Power BI workspace:

If you’re using Fabric, use Manage access:

Then, search for your service principal and give it access as a Member or Admin. Repeat this process for all workspaces you would like Carousel to have access to. You cannot use a Group for workspace access; It must be the service principal, and the service principal must have Member or Admin Access.

Create External Authentication for Power BI in Carousel Cloud

In the Carousel UI, click on your username in the upper right, select Configure, and select System.

There, you will select External Authentications on the left-hand side and create a New Authentication.

There, you will give your Authentication a name. This name will display when creating a Power BI Bulletin. Then, you will enter the Tenant ID, Client ID, and Client Secret that you have gotten from the above Microsoft KB.

Now, all you need to do is save your new External Authentication, and you can use it to create Power BI bulletins in Carousel.

Power BI Bulletin Creation

To create a Power BI bulletin, navigate to the zone you would like it to display in, select New Bulletin, select Dynamic as the type, and then select Power BI.

Select the Authentication you just created from the drop-down menu. The Workspace, Report, and Dashboard drop-down menus will contain all the workspaces, reports, and dashboards you have given Carousel access to using your service principal. If those menus are empty, you must grant access in Microsoft Entra ID and try again.

You can also select whether you would like your Power BI bulletins to display live on your signage players or if you would like them to display a snapshot that updates every 15 minutes. Choosing the snapshot option allows you to set a load time of up to 30 seconds for the report to load before the snapshot is taken.

Once you have selected your desired workspace, you can toggle between Reports or Dashboards for that given Workspace. If you choose a dashboard, you can move on to the next step. If you choose a report, you will now be given the option to choose the Page or Bookmark for that report.

Once you have selected the options from Power BI, schedule your bulletin, apply any other desired settings, and select Publish.

Additional Notes:

July 2024 - “Time to upgrade your browser” Pop-up

• Beginning in July 2024, Microsoft began adding a pop-up to some Power BI reports indicating the usage of an outdated browser for display. Carousel Cloud does not have control over the browsers used for display. The hardware manufacturer controls this versioning via their own software and firmware updates. Any questions about these updates should be directed to the manufacturer for additional clarification or troubleshooting.

• If you have a touch or mouse-enabled screen, you may be able to clear this pop-up manually by clicking the checkbox not to show again.

• To remove the pop-up programmatically until a browser update occurs, you must edit the bulletin only to show a snapshot of the report rendered within Carousel Cloud, which is automatically updated every 15 minutes.

Advanced Troubleshooting

• If Carousel can’t access a Power BI Report using the service principal, it typically shows a white screen in the Preview when creating the Power BI Bulletin. This is usually because the service principal does not have direct access as a Member to the workspace containing the report.

• If you encounter this, the best way to identify the problem is to toggle ‘Display a live report,' open the Web Inspector, and look for errors in the Console or Network tab while attempting to select the report. The specific error will be in the response for the request call that uses /getembedinfo?token=…

Other Notes and Performance Considerations

• Power BI Datasets using Row Level Security (RLS) are not supported.

• The capacity used for Power BI directly affects how quickly resource-intensive reports load. See Capacity Planning in Power BI for more information.

• When using a Microsoft Fabric capacity, F2 capacity and above are supported.

• Carousel requires that your reports finish loading before they will display. For live reports, Carousel will wait 20 seconds for that loading to complete, and if it does not load within that time, the bulletin will be skipped.

• Carousel does its best to display all your data visualizations as designed, but complex reports with long load times and other factors can make that difficult. There are ways in the Power BI desktop app and the Power BI service to optimize your reports for use with Carousel. Below are some articles with more info on how to make your visualizations more performant.

  • Enable Query Caching in Power BI Service Query caching in Power BI Premium - Power BI

  • Set a longer Scheduled Refresh interval on Datasets in the Power BI Service.

  • Set a longer Page Refresh in Power BI Desktop on the page. Automatic page refresh in Power BI Desktop - Power BI

  • Enable Query Reduction Using DirectQuery in Power BI - Power BI

  • Use a dedicated capacity instead of a shared capacity. Manage Microsoft Power BI Premium capacities - Power BI