Presenting Power View Reports to Users

As you begin to use the new Power View reporting feature that is available with the Reporting Services 2012 integration in SharePoint 2010 one of the things that you will need to assess is how you are going to allow the users to access the reports.  What are the different options that you have when providing access to the Power View report files (rdlx) in SharePoint?

Here is a list of options that you could use:

• store the Power View reports in a Document Library
• display the Power View reports in a PowerPivot Gallery
• use a Page Viewer Web Part to display the Power View report
• use a Silverlight Web Part to display the Power View report

Here is how each of these will look to the end-user that will be access the reports:

Document Library

Above we can see that the Power View report files are available and stored in a document library, nothing really fancy, just storing the rdlx files.

PowerPivot Gallery

The PowerPivot Gallery is a very nice option to display the Power View reports. Provides a nice visual display of the reports and users are able to see if additional views are included in the files as well.  The view I have displayed above is the default Gallery setup, but additional options are available such as just displaying the files in the document layout like the Document Library display in the first example, Theater, and Carousel.

Page Viewer Web Part

The Pager Viewer web part is a nice option to include a Power View report (or a particular view) on a page.  This is a nice option to include a Power View report into any existing page and to provide a nice controlled output of the report.  You can see that the ‘Preview Bar’ has been removed from the top of the report so a user is not able to access the ‘Edit Report’ option.  The users are still able to interact with the report and access the different views in the report as well.

How do you configure the Page Viewer web part?  Pretty basic and a bit easier than the next option that will be looked at.

1. Create a web part page
2. Add a Page Viewer web part to the page
3. Specify the URL path along with additional parameters for the report
4. Specify the height and width for the web part for the appearance

Here is what the Page Viewer web part settings look like for the example displayed above:

Here is the URL path that I have specified along with some additional parameters that I am setting to provide the desired output:

/_layouts/ReportServer/AdHocReportDesigner.aspx?RelativeReportUrl=/Shared%20Documents/Hotel%20Performance%20Dashboard.rdlx&ViewMode=Presentation&ReportSection=ReportSection2&True&Fit=True&PreviewBar=False

In this example I am setting the View Mode, the Report Section I want to display, and hiding the Preview Bar.  These are the core settings that need to be set to get this output.  There are additional settings that you can explore and a few of these I discuss here in the following post URL Actions with Reporting Services Power View (RTM) and as one person commented there are additional parameters available and you can see these by accessing the properties of the output in PowerPoint as discussed here Can i edit my PowerView Report exported to PowerPoint in Presentation Mode? YES YOU CAN.

If we dig into the above output for the Pager View web part we can see that the output is displayed in an iframe and granted just by removing the Preview Bar doesn’t mean that the user couldn’t track down the actual location of the report and launch it from there, so this by no means is a security option.  The user still needs the proper permissions to the Power View report file (Restricted Readers – requires the ability to Open Items and this is different compared to regular Reporting Services reports because of the Silverlight application).

Silverlight Web Part

The Silverlight web part display looks identical to the Page Viewer.  This option requires a bit more of setup and I have to thank Robert Bruckner for the details on configuring this option.

1. Create a web part page
2. Add a Silverlight web part to the page
3. Specify the URL path to the Silverlight application
4. Specify the custom initialization parameters (Other Settings)
5. Specify the height and width for the web part for the appearance

The path to the Silverlight application is the following:

/_layouts/ReportServer/ClientBin/Microsoft.Reporting.AdHoc.Shell.Bootstrapper.xap

The custom initialization parameters that I used in the example above are the following:

ItemPath=http://win-doqtev64aj4/Shared%20Documents/Hotel%20Performance%20Dashboard.rdlx,ReportServerUri=http://win-doqtev64aj4/_vti_bin/reportserver/,ViewMode=Presentation,PreviewBar=False,Fit=True,ReportSection=ReportSection2

The template Robert provided for this setup is the following for the parameters:

ItemPath=http://<YourServername>/<YourSite>/YourReport.rdlx,ReportServerUri=http://<YourServername>/_vti_bin/reportserver/,ViewMode=Presentation,PreviewBar=False,Fit=True

Here is what the Silverlight web part settings look like for my example above:

When you add the Silverlight web part to the page you will be prompted for the URL path for the Silverlight application. That setting and address is also available in the above screenshot in the Application settings when you click on the ‘Configure…’ button.

You can once again dig into the output like we did above with the IE Developer Tools (F12) and you will see the following:

A little different output here and if you dig around enough you will eventually track down the initialization parameters, so once again not an option to prevent the users from finding out the original source of the file, but it is still an option that you can use to display Power View reports in a web page.

Summary

So to wrap up this post, I just wanted to show the different options you have available in SharePoint to display and provide access to Power View reports to end-users.  The first two options allow the users to launch the reports in the web browser and access the Edit Report or go into Full Screen modes.  I would use the PowerPivot Gallery option because of the nice output and provides the users quick insight as to what is included in the report and an overview of the different views (if more than one exists).  The last two options would be something to explore if you want to include a Power View report on a web page.  This is a nice clean option where we have removed the Preview Bar, but have still allowed the user access to the report to interact and browse the different views.  This could be a nice option if say you want to include a Power View report in a PerformancePoint dashboard.

I hope you have enjoyed this quick overview and for more information on how to use Power View and creating tabular models, don’t forget to check out our book here – Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View.