Power BI Alerts

What are Power BI alerts?

Power BI alerts are an efficient means of notifying users and keeping them informed of any changes to key metrics or reports. Power BI allows you to set up alerts and notifications based on specific conditions, actions, or thresholds for your data visuals. Once these conditions are breached, Power BI will send automated notifications to the users for any corrective measures or decisions. Alerts are easy to set up and provide a flexible option of setting up hourly or daily notification frequency for receiving alerts and notifications through emails.

How to set Power BI alerts?

To set Power BI alerts, you should have either a Pro or Premium (PPU) license. Ensure that you have an account in the Power BI service for publishing. Once you have set up your account, follow the steps highlighted below to set up alerts:

Step 1: Connect to the datasets using Power BI Desktop and create a Power BI report or data visualization for which you want to set up alerts and notifications.

Step 2: Once the report is ready, publish it to the Power BI service using the Publish feature in Power BI Desktop.

Step 3: Assess the KPIs, measures, or any other metrics for setting up alerts and notifications.

Step 4: Navigate to your dashboard or visual in Power BI Service, and hover your mouse over the visual. Click on the ellipsis (…) in the top right corner of the visual.

Step 5: Select the Manage alerts option from the context menu.

Step 6: Click on the Add alert rule button on the Manage alerts screen.

Step 7: Configure the alert rule, such as alert title, condition, type, notification frequency, etc. You can also define whether you want to receive an email notification for the alert or not.

Step 8: Click on the Save and close button to save the configuration. 

Step 9: Click on the ellipsis (…) in the top right corner of the visual and Manage alerts. You will see the newly created alerts in the Manage alerts screen.

You will start receiving notifications when the specified conditions are met. These alerts on reports will also be available in the Notification Center in the Power BI service. You can click on the notification to view the alert details. You can access the Power BI alerts and notifications by clicking on the Settings – Notifications in the Power BI menubar.

Navigate to the Power BI Alerts tab to view the existing alerts on reports or visuals.

Note that there are certain visuals, such as Pie charts, Tables, Matrix, etc., where Power BI alert options are not available. For example, you can’t set up alerts on a table in Power BI Service. In the next section, we will see how you can integrate Power Automate with Power BI.

How to integrate Power Automate with Power BI?

You can integrate Power Automate with Power BI data alerts. Follow the steps highlighted below to automate a process with Power BI data alerts:

Step 1: Log into Power Automate using the link. 

Step 2: 

• Click on the Templates link on the left navigation.
• Search for Power BI in the search bar.
• Select Send an e-mail to any audience when a Power BI data alert is triggered.

Step 3: Click on the Continue button to automatically send an email when conditions are met.

Step 4: Define the parameters such as the subject line, message body, and recipients’ emails for the email.

Step 5: Save the automated flow and activate it to enable the automation.

Note: Power BI service doesn’t support alerts for multiple users. However, using Power Automate, you can avail this feature.

In the next section, we will go through some examples to demonstrate how to set up Power BI alerts.

Examples

In this section, we will demonstrate the Power BI alerts and notifications set up through 3 examples as highlighted below.

Example #1

In this example, we will set up alerts on Power BI reports using the Emp_Records dataset in Power BI Desktop. The Emp_Records dataset contains the records of each employee in a company.

To set up an alert, follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Import the Emp_Records dataset in Power BI Desktop using the Get data option and load it into Power BI.

Step 2: Navigate to the Visualizations pane, select the visuals, and drag and drop the data fields to the values for data visualization. Apply data formatting to customize as per your reporting requirements.

Here, we have created 3 card visuals, a line chart, and a stacked area chart in the report canvas based on the data fields.

For example, for the line chart, we have mapped the country_name and ccn3 fields to the X-axis and Y-axis, respectively.

Step 3: Once the report is complete, publish it to Power BI Service.

Step 4: Log into the Power BI service and navigate to My workspace – New – Dashboard – Create dashboard.

Step 5: Pin the visuals to the newly created Dashboard tiles.

Step 6: Set up alerts for the visuals by clicking on the ellipsis (…) and choosing Manage alerts.

Step 7: Add alert rule for the visual. Provide the condition, threshold, and notification frequency. Click on Save and close.

Similarly, you can also set up alerts for the stacked area chart for the Salary by age in the company visual.

Repeat the same process to set up an alert rule for this visual.

Step 8: 

• Click on the Settings icon in the Power BI menu bar.

• Select Notifications in the Preferences section.
• Navigate to the Power BI Alerts tab to view the Alerts and Notifications.

You can further edit or delete the existing alerts as per your requirements.

Example #2

In this example, we will demonstrate Power BI alerts using the Advertising_Data dataset in Power BI with cards-only visuals. The Advertising_Data dataset shows the advertising costs on various platforms — TV, Billboards, Google Ads, Social Media, Influencer Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing.

The steps for this demo are outlined below:

Step 1: Import the Advertising_Data dataset into Power BI using the Get data option.

Step 2: Navigate to the Visualizations pane and choose card visual to create card visualizations.

Step 3: Publish the report to Power BI Service.

Step 4: In Power BI service, create a new dashboard by navigating My workspace – New – Dashboard – Create dashboard and pinning the visuals to the dashboard tiles.

Step 5: Follow the similar steps as outlined in Example 1 to set up alert rules for the card visuals upto Step 8.

Step 6: Navigate to Power BI Settings – Notifications – Power BI Alerts tab.

Example #3

In this example, we will set up Power BI alerts using the most-polluted-countries dataset in Power BI Desktop. This dataset contains data on pollution in all the countries in the world.

The key thing to focus on here is the unavailability of an alert option for specific visuals in Power BI Service.

Step 1: Import the most-polluted-countries dataset in Power BI Desktop.

Step 2: Create data visualization by choosing the visuals from the Visualizations pane and applying formatting to the visuals.

Publish the report to Power BI service post desired formatting.

Step 3: Create a dashboard in Power BI Service for this report. Follow the setup process as outlined in example 1

You will notice that while the Manage alerts option is available for card and line chart visuals, the same is not available for Pie charts.

Line chart

Visual chart

Pie chart

Important Things to Note

• For certain visuals (e.g., pie charts) or types of dashboard tiles, Power BI alert setup options are not available. 
• Power BI alerts work accurately on refreshed datasets. If your dataset is not refreshed regularly, alerts may not work correctly.
• You will need either Pro or Premium licenses to use the Power BI alert features.
• Power BI alerts can be created on pinned reports using streaming datasets. However, you can’t create the same on streaming tiles.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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