Power BI Report Builder

What is Power BI Report Builder?

Power BI Report Builder is Microsoft’s standalone tool for creating paginated reports for Power BI. Unlike Power BI Desktop which focuses on interactive dashboards, Report Builder specializes in creating printable reports that can span multiple pages.

Key Features

• Paginated report creation
• Layout control
• Export to multiple formats (PDF, Excel, Word)
• Support for parameter-driven reports
• Integration with Power BI service

Power BI Report Builder vs Power BI Desktop

How to Use Power BI Report Builder

1. Installation and Setup

Report Builder requires:

1. Power BI Premium capacity (P1-P5) or
2. Premium Per User (PPU) license

2. Creating Your First Report

1. Launch Report Builder
2. Choose a report template
3. Connect to your data source
4. Design the report layout
5. Add parameters and filters

Adding Filters in Report Builder

Filters in Report Builder can be implemented through:

1. Parameters

   • Create a parameter
   • Link it to your dataset
   • Add parameter visibility controls

2. Dataset Filters

   • Apply filters directly to datasets
   • Use expressions for dynamic filtering

Comparison with Evidence Templated Pages

While Power BI Report Builder excels at paginated reports, Evidence offers a more modern, code-first approach to report generation. Let’s compare:

Power BI Report Builder

• GUI-based design
• Windows-only application
• Requires Premium licensing for deployment
• Complex setup process

Evidence Templated Pages

• Markdown-based authoring
• Platform-independent
• Open-source
• Can self-host for free or use Evidence’s cloud hosted solution
• Git-friendly version control

Creating a Customer Report using Evidence Templated Pages

In Evidence, you can create dynamic customer reports using templated pages. Here’s how:

1. Create an index page at pages/customers/index.md, and add a customers query and a DataTable component to it. Users will use this to navigate to each customer’s report.

```sql customers
select 
    customer_name,
    'customers/' + customer_name as link,
from orders
```

<DataTable data={customers} link=link />
```

2. Create a templated page at pages/customers/[customer].md, and add a filtered query to it.

```sql customer
select 
    customer_name,
    total_sales,
    region
from orders 
where customer_name = '${params.customer}'
```

<BarChart 
    data={customer} 
    x=region 
    y=total_sales 
/>

This will generate a report for each customer, with a chart showing total sales by region.

Is Power BI Report Builder Free?

While the Report Builder tool itself is free to download, using paginated reports in Power BI requires either:

• Power BI Premium capacity (P1-P5)
• Premium Per User (PPU) license
• Power BI Report Server license

Power BI Report Builder and SSRS

Both tools serve similar purposes but in different contexts:

• Report Builder: Modern tool for Power BI ecosystem
• SSRS: Traditional enterprise reporting platform

They share:

• RDL report format
• Similar design interface
• Paginated report capabilities

Conclusion

Power BI Report Builder is a powerful tool for creating paginated reports, but requires significant investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. For teams looking for a more flexible, modern approach to report generation, Evidence’s templated pages offer a compelling alternative with its code-first, database-driven architecture.

For more information about building dynamic reports with Evidence, check out the templated pages documentation.