A dashboard built on the side that shows figures nobody should see, because the technical view feeding it ignores access rights: that is the classic risk of a makeshift reporting export. This application serves your data to Power BI and Excel directly, never going further than what the account carrying the feed is allowed to see.
Who the application is for
For managers who want to build dashboards in Power BI or Excel from their business data, without opening their database to the outside world or duplicating access rights in a second system. It suits a management team that wants an account to see, in its report, only what it already sees on its usual screens.
What the application does
- Serves a feed that Power BI Desktop and Excel read natively, with no extra software to install and no custom connector to get approved.
- Has every feed carried by a real account and runs every read with that account's rights, never with extended rights.
- Gives each feed its own access token, revocable on its own, without touching the other feeds.
- Lets you choose, feed by feed, which tables and fields are exposed, with a readable-label column next to each link, so relations do not have to be rebuilt by hand.
- Keeps a log of every call: table, format, rows actually served, rejections, duration and the account whose rights were applied.
- Offers, for anyone without Power BI, the same table as a CSV file or a complete Excel workbook.
Day to day
- Create an account dedicated to reporting reads and give it exactly the read rights it needs, no more.
- Create the feed: name it, choose the account that carries it, set the rows per page and the absolute cap.
- Choose the tables and fields to expose, ticking the readable-label column next to each linking field.
- Paste the feed's address into Power BI Desktop or Excel, using anonymous authentication: the token is already included in the address.
- Check the call log as soon as a report shows a figure that looks wrong: it immediately shows how many rows were actually served.
What the application does not do
- It does not push anything to a Power BI service and creates no dataset there: Power BI comes to read, the application does not transmit anything on its own initiative.
- It works read-only: no write can come back from Power BI or Excel into your data.
- It does not open your database itself: a technical view exposed directly would bypass access rights, and that is exactly what the application refuses to do.
- It needs hosting able to serve its own technical page; some fully managed online hosting plans do not allow that.
- Its rendering inside Power BI Desktop itself, on a real machine, has not been tested: only the feed's compliance with the expected format was checked on the server side.
Getting started
Start with the account: create one dedicated to reporting reads and check, by signing in as it, that it sees exactly what you want to show, no more and no less. Then decide, for each feed, which tables and fields to expose, and whether a filter should be added on top of the access rights already in place.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.