power bi report server

What is Power BI Report Server and Why Does it Matter?

Despite the fact that many are adopting cloud technologies, there are businesses that prefer to maintain their data on-premise. In order to facilitate these organizations, Microsoft introduced an efficient on-premise reporting tool called the Power BI Report Server.

As an on-premise reporting tool, Power BI Report Server enables businesses to maintain, host, and manage several types of reports like Power BI reports, paginated reports, mobile reports, and KPIs. It is built upon SQL Server Reporting Service’s (SSRS) architecture. The Report Server allows the end-users to access the reports through various web browsers, mobile devices, or by email.

Two significant components of the Power BI Report Server are the Web Portal and the Power BI Reports.

  • Web Portal – It comprises all the necessary Power BI reports, mobile reports, paginated reports, KPIs, and Excel workbooks to host and display in various web browsers. Different types of reports are organized and categorized as per the traditional folder hierarchy but also can be accessed as a separate file or folder.
  • Power BI Reports – Power BI Reports are a multi-paged informative file that depicts a data model through visualizations. From a wide range of visualization options to choose from, the end-users can build reports that are more than one page. After creating on the Power BI Desktop, one can easily publish the reports on the web portal for other users and teams to access and use it. These reports are widely used for providing the crucial information needed to make important business decisions.

The two additional types of reports hosted on the Report Server are:

  • Paginated Reports are well-structured, document-style page-to-page reports that are mostly saved as paged documents. One can easily navigate through the entire data without compromising the quality of the report. These reports can be printed as a report from a PDF or Word file.
  • Mobile Reports are the ones that the server hosts and shares on the web portal. These reports are more like the Power BI reports. However, these reports are more adaptable and optimized for the mobile screen. The end-users can select, realign, and reformat the reports and create interactive and easy-to-read report page views then and there.

Some of the key features of the Power BI Report Server are as follows:

  • Share reports across teams easily
  • Enhances collaboration with other users and teams
  • Deploy and use mobile reports, paginated reports, and KPIs
  • 100+ custom visualization options
  • Connect and access reports using Power BI Mobile
  • Supported by multiple operating systems
  • Allows cross-filtering, tooltips, slicers, data exploration, etc.
  • Migrate data from reports hosted on a Report Server to a CSV format file

These are some of the major advantages of leveraging the Power BI Report Server.

The best part about Power BI Report Server is its compatibility and easy integration features with the existing reporting services. Also, it is highly secure and effective when it comes to visualizing the reports. Power BI Report Server allows hosting, sharing, and collaborating within the organization’s firewall.

Other advantages of the Power BI Report server include,

On-premises: Enabling businesses with on-premise infrastructure to achieve business benefits using Power BI on-premises.

Framework for SSRS: Teams or end-users can transfer paginated reports, mobile reports, and KPIs to the SSRS Framework.

Power BI Reports: Organizations can establish both cloud and on-premises BI architecture and models through visualizations.

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