PPM Express provides an ability to configure PPM Express Power BI Reports and better understand how your projects and portfolios progress, how your resources perform, and how they are currently loaded.
You need a registered Power BI account in the Power BI service.
PPM Express provides several report packs that you can configure. In this article, we will review how to configure the Advanced Report Pack.
Advanced report pack configuration
To start the Power BI Reports configuration, open PPM Express, navigate to the Report Settings page by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page, and choose the Reporting option.
Please note: The setting is available only to users with the 'Administrate app' permission in PPM Express. PPM Express user permissions are managed via the People Management section.
To activate the report or update PPM Express Advanced Power BI Pack, follow these steps:
1. Open the PPM Express Report Settings menu and download the report pack by clicking the Download Advanced Report Template link.
2. The report can be added to the Power BI service either using the Power BI Desktop app or via the Power BI service. Please select the way that works better for you:
- Open the downloaded file in Power BI Desktop and publish it. Please make sure to log in to the Power BI desktop with the account that has access to the required workspace in Power BI Service.
For instructions on how to publish Power BI reports, please refer to Microsoft documentation.
Please note: If you are using Power BI Pro, we do not recommend publishing the report to 'My Workspace'. It is recommended to publish the report to a newly created workspace or to any other workspace that you have besides 'My Workspace'. This way, you can share the report with other team members and navigate to PPM Express's reports.
If you publish the report to 'My Workspace' (in case you are not using Power BI Pro), it won't be possible to share it with other team members, and you will be the only user who can navigate to the report from PPM Express. - Open the Power BI service, navigate to the required workspace, and select Upload => Browse.
Please note: In this case, the Power BI service will add a report to the service and will create an empty Dashboard.
3. After publishing the report, we need to configure its Semantic model (former dataset).
PPM Express has an open protocol that allows querying data - PPM Express OData.
Navigate back to the PPM Express Report Settings page. In the Report Settings, you can find OData feed URL – this is a URL link to PPM Express instance OData that you can use to connect to PPM Express OData.
Copy the URL from the OData feed URL field.
4. Open the Power BI service Workspace. Navigate to the report Semantic Model (former Dataset) and click on the ellipsis, choose Settings.
5. On the Settings for the published Semantic model (dataset) page, open the Parameters section and paste the OData URL to the PathToPPMX parameter.
ODataFeedsContainAllFields parameter is optional and is used only for cases when it is required to include the custom fields from PPM Express pages to the reports.
Please note: We recommend leaving this parameter empty while configuring your reports in the Power BI service. Changes to the report Data Model can only be done in Power BI Desktop. That is why changes in the parameter will only take effect if the needed feeds are provided in the ODataFeedsContainAllFields parameter in Power BI Desktop and the refresh operation is performed in Power BI Desktop. For detailed instructions on including custom fields in the report Data Model, please refer to this article.
Click Apply.
Please note: Power BI service stores credentials used to configure PPM Express reports. Suppose you have already configured any other PPM Express pack using the same OData URL and established a connection using the PPM Express token. In that case, the next few steps can be skipped, and you can set up the Automated data refresh.
6. Return to the PPM Express Report settings page.
To be able to create reports, a password is required. In PPM Express, you can create a token that can be used as a password.
To create a token for the report, perform the following actions:
Click Create access token under the OData feed URL.
Click Generate Token button;
Copy the token.
Make sure you copy the above token now. We don't store it and you will not be able to see it again.
Once the token is revoked, it cannot be restored.
Copy the created token and switch back to Power BI Settings for PPM Express page.
7. Open the Data source credentials section.
Click on the OData => Edit credentials link.
Configure PPM Express menu will appear.
8. Paste the token copied from the PPM Express Report settings page to the Password field.
Select a Basic authentication method. Fill in the User name field.
Click Sign in.
9. Next, we need to establish a connection to the Web. By establishing a connection to the Web, we ensure that the latest version of the report pack will be available for download.
Click on the Web => Edit credentials link.
Select an Anonymous authentication method and Organizational privacy level. Click Sign in.
Automated data refresh and first data sync
Setting up the Automated Data Refresh at once is recommended to display the latest data for the report.
For this, click Scheduled Refresh in the Settings for PPMX.
In the Keep your data up to date section, toggle the switch to On.
You can also choose the Refresh Frequency, Time Zone, and Time when the refresh will take place.
Click Apply once you are done.
Also, it is required to launch data synchronization for the report at once, so it starts displaying data for the report. For this purpose, open your Workspace with the report, and click the Refresh button on the report Semantic model (former dataset).
Adding Advanced report pack to PPM Express pages
PPM Express provides an ability to navigate to the reports from different PPM Express pages directly (Projects, Portfolio, Programs, Resources, Objectives, and Challenges).
Please note: Reports from the Advanced pack can be opened not only from the PPM Express pages with Projects, Portfolios, Programs, etc. but also from the project sections. Other report packs are not available from the project/portfolio/program sections, only from the 'Reports' button on the PPM Expres pages.
To add your report to the required pages in PPM Express, it is required to provide the report home page URL to PPM Express. If you select to open any PPM Express report from these pages, the Power BI service will be opened in a new tab, and information for the selected report will be displayed.
1. Navigate to the published PPM Express report in Power BI, open its Home page, and copy its URL, excluding the /ReportSection part.
It is crucial because you publish a report file using your own Power BI account. The published report resides in the workspace of the account you used. To let the PPM Express App navigate to the published report in the Power BI service, the PPM Express App has to be aware of the report URL address.
2. Return to the PPM Express Reports Settings page and click on the Advanced Pack button.
3. Paste the report URL into the Report URL field on the Edit Report page.
4. In the Scope field, select the PPM Express pages where this report will become available.
5. Click Save Report.
Please note: If you have received a notification that the PPM Express Team updated Power BI Reports, you can download the latest version and configure reports once again, following the steps in this article, to stay up to date and use the updated reports.
It is crucial to provide a new report URL into the Report URL field and click Save Report after the update of PPM Express Power BI reports.
Also, if you have created the custom Power BI reports on PPM Express data, they need to be recreated after the update following the steps in this article.
If you wish to stop using Power BI reports and do not need the token you have created, you can revoke it.
To revoke the token, open the Report Settings page and select the token you want to revoke.
Click the Revoke Selected button.
Please note: Once the token is revoked, it cannot be restored.
If you need to export the report, we recommend exporting it to PDF first: Export => PDF.
If you click File => Print this page instead, please enable the 'Background graphics' checkbox in the print preview dialog to get all the boxes to appear and include colors.