Power BI designers begin their typical workflow with reporting and analytical needs of the end user.
Based on that, they create a data model and reports in Power BI Desktop. After that, reportsare published to the Power BI service, Microsoft’s cloud-based reporting portal, where, if needed, dashboards can be created too. End users have the choice to consume Power BI content by connecting to the Power BI service via browser, Excel or mobile device. However, there are also scenarios where users want to receive content via email.
Subscription
In case you would like to receive report or set of reports periodically in the form of a newsletter, you can choose subscription. In that way, users are informed about the current business progress with each issued newsletter.
Such a group of users could include senior management, which usually has some specific reporting requirements. If they don’t want to connect to the Power BI service every time and search for information, they can choose to receive content via email, periodically or just before important meetings, with clearly presented Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Power BI allows users to subscribe to the desired content. They will receive an email containing a snapshot and a link to the subscribed content.
When adding a new subscription, you need to specify the recipients of the email and how often they would like to receive the emails: daily, weekly, monthly, or when the data refreshes.
Optionally, it is possible to set a subject and email message, as well as additional information such as access permission and link to the Power BI content.
Alert
Unlike subscription, where users are notified about the status of the entire report or the dashboard with all the presented KPIs, there is also possibility of being notified about the status of an individual KPI.
In that case, PowerBI sends an email about alert that the KPI in your dashboard has reached the threshold you’ve set. In general, alerts are somewhat more rigorous than subscriptions, because multiple conditions need to be met at the same time in order to receive an alert notification. They are checked only when data refreshes. The KPI must reach an alert threshold and also must be different from the value it had with the previous data refresh. If the condition on the notification frequency of sending alerts is met, the user will receive an adequate email notification.
When setting an alert, a rule is defined according to which the notification is sent only when the KPI reaches a value below or above the set threshold. The chosen notification frequency is also taken into account.
When Power BI triggers an alert, it adds a message to your Notification center and adds a bell icon to the KPI visual. If selected, it also sends an email notification. It is recommendedto select it and thus ensure that the notification reaches our users in a timely manner.
The recipient of the notification is only the user who set the alert. If there is a need to notifyother users, this is an additional action that needs to be done in Power Automate and integrated with the alert.
As for limitations, alerts can only be set on dashboard tiles pinned from gauges, KPIs and cards.
Conclusion
Thanks to email notifications that are available in Power BI, we are able to track the data that matters most to us. By selecting the report, dashboard, or KPI visual, and setting up a subscription or alert, Power BI will notify us about status of our most important data.
As this is a very useful functionality, and there is still room for improvement, we can expect further upgrades over time.