Power BI Content Pack

What is a Power BI Content Pack?

A Power BI content pack app is primarily a bundled package of dashboards, reports, Excel workbooks, and datasets that you can either create or use within Power BI. Using the Power BI content pack app, you can quickly and conveniently share the data visualizations and insights with users, both external or internal to your organization.

It acts as a portable bundle for sharing dashboards and reports with your end users or group of users without the need to provide access to the underlying dataset. Users can easily download and consume these pre-built content packs without needing to build their reports from scratch or access the underlying data directly.

Power BI content pack app provides the flexibility of refreshing the contents with underlying data changes and can be custom-tailored to meet the requirements of businesses or end users. Using these packs, you can quickly connect with data sources, create customized reports or dashboards using these data sources, and then distribute the contents. Some of the examples of Power BI content packs include:

• Power BI content pack for JIRA
• Power BI content pack for ServiceNow
• Dynamics GP Power BI content pack
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Social Engagement
• Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights 
• TyGraph for Yammer 3.0
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Financials
• Webtrends for SharePoint

How to Create a Power BI Content Pack?

To create a Power BI Content Pack, follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Log in to your Power BI Service account and navigate to the My workspace section containing your dashboard or report visuals that you intend to include in the content pack.

Step 2: Click on the Create Content Pack option.

Step 3: Provide the Title and Description for the content pack. Specify the user access information, i.e., whether you want to provide access to any specific groups or the entire organization for your content pack.

Step 4: Select the information you want to capture in the content pack. That may include Dashboards, Reports, Datasets, etc. You can further customize by adding specific filters or slicers for a better user experience.

Step 5: Click on Publish to push your content pack to be accessible as per your configuration.

Step 6: Navigate to the Get Data screen to browse the content packs that have been published.

Step 7: You can also use the Content Pack Test to view the details of the content pack, including the contents of the pack.

Note: The Power BI content pack feature has been discontinued for the new workspaces and has been replaced with Apps. Now using the Apps feature, you can easily download a copy, personalize the contents in your Power BI, and distribute Power BI content to the end users. 

Using the Power BI apps, you can install any app with a single click from a wide range of available app options. You also will have the option to download a sample to view the details.

For existing users who are using the content packs, Microsoft will continue to support them in app workspaces in Office 365 groups. However, you can make a transition to create your content apps in Power BI apps so that you can experience the new features and flexibility in the new workspace. In the future, Power BI apps will entirely replace the Power BI content pack app.

Examples

In this section, we will understand different scenarios of using the Power BI content pack through some examples as provided below.

Example #1

In this example, we will demonstrate how to use the Power BI content pack for JIRA to create a JIRA dashboard in the Power BI tool. JIRA is a tool offered by Atlassian and extensively used primarily to support project management, agile mode of delivery, and defect management processes. You can create a JIRA dashboard to track and perform analysis of the various components.

Implementing the Power BI content pack for JIRA, you can easily import the underlying dataset available in the JIRA tool into Power BI and create different JIRA dashboards for your analysis. 

To implement the Power BI content pack for JIRA, follow the steps outlined below:

Step 1: Log into the Power BI Service application and select JIRA from the list of available content packs. 

Step 2: Enter the JIRA URL in your project and provide the required credentials.

Step 3: Once the connection is established, Power BI will create a JIRA dashboard or reports based on the underlying dataset.

Clicking on the dashboard tiles will navigate you to the Power BI Content pack for JIRA for user interaction.

Step 4: Add filters or slicers to the dashboard or the report to display the various issues, the progress of requirements, or team velocity over phases.

Note: You can use different third-party apps to connect with the JIRA content pack, such as the AIO Power BI connector for JIRA.

Example #2

In this example, we will understand the Power BI content pack for ServiceNow and explore the ServiceNow data with Power BI. ServiceNow is a service management tool used for incident management across leading organizations in various departments. With the Power BI content pack for ServiceNow, you can easily access various reports and data insights on your open, recently resolved, and recently closed incidents across different business units.

To use the Power BI content pack for ServiceNow, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Log into the Power BI Service and select ServiceNow from the list of available content packs

Step 2: Provide the ServiceNow URL to the ServiceNow instance and enter the sign-in credentials

Step 3: Power BI will establish the connection with ServiceNow and create a dashboard displaying the details of different incident tickets, metrics, and reports.

You can perform a drill-down on the different tiles or metrics to view additional details in the dashboard, such as the number of open incidents, resolved tickets, or newly created ones. You can further customize the created reports and add insights for the metrics. You can also schedule the frequency of data refresh to update the dashboard.

Example #3

In this example, we will go through the details of the dynamics gp Power BI content pack. Dynamics GP is a business management application offered by Microsoft Corporation that can be used for accounting processes or as enterprise resource planning (ERP) management. Using this application, organizations can use various features related to financial accounting, profit/loss calculation, and managing operations. 

Microsoft provides a Dynamics gp Power BI content pack to connect Power BI with Microsoft Dynamics software. Using this content pack, you can create a dashboard or reports on Financials, Sales, and Inventory management. You can apply various data filters or slicers to provide user interaction on the chart.

To use the dynamics gp Power BI content pack, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Log into the Power BI Service and select Microsoft Dynamics GP version from the list of available content packs

Step 2: Provide the OData Feed URL upon launching the content pack. Ensure that before setting up the content pack, you have OData service for Dynamics GP installed. This will enable Power BI to connect with GP data through a published data source. 

Step 3: Power BI will establish the connection with Dynamics GP and create a dashboard displaying the details of different financial information such as Financial, Sales, Purchasing, and Inventory details.

Benefits

The key benefits of Power BI Content Packs are outlined below:

• Quick Data Sharing and Insights: This enables you to quickly share the data insights, reports, dashboards, and datasets without the need to recreate these artifacts from scratch. It saves time, effort, and resources.
• Fast and easy collaboration: Allows easy and fast collaboration with end users by sharing the content pack in a single click.
• It fosters standardization and eliminates inconsistencies by facilitating single report format and dashboard reporting.
• You can quickly update and deploy any changes to your Power BI content packs which others can access and refresh to reflect the changes.
• You can improve overall efficiency by reusing the pre-build reports or dashboards for your reporting requirements.

Important Things to Note

• You need to have Power BI Pro licenses to create and consume the content.
• Power BI content packs include only reports, dashboards, and datasets. It can’t contain the underlying data sources.
• Power BI content packs are no more available for new workspaces and replaced with Power BI apps.
• Be careful while providing access to your Power BI content packs. Use the access control for data sharing.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Power BI Content Pack. Here we explain how to create content pack in power bi, with pack, examples and benefits. You can learn more from the following articles –

• Power BI Data Catalog
• Power BI Mobile Apps
• Power BI Integration with Azure