PowerBI Robots uses the Microsoft Power BI Client API. It supports report and page level filters from the filter pane. You can also apply bookmarks and slicers. The limitation can be found here.

When configuring your playlists, you can choose your visual format from the following options:

• Image
• A4 PDF (single or multiple pages)
• Letter size PDF (single or multiple pages)
• Excel (single or multiple with the visual´s data)

Important note: Exporting to Excel only supports data from report visuals

PowerBI Robots works with Power BI Online and Report Server as you can see in the image below.

The limitations are subjacent to the fact that you will not be able to use the filter settings because reports are rendered through a direct URL (limitations of Microsoft's API). For example, you won't be able to select/change bookmarks or slicers. Also, we don't guarantee that you will be able to customize filters when using this kind of report source.

You can test any of your playlists (enabled or disabled) in the PowerBI Robots Agent without running the service. It's also possible to override your playlist destination to a new folder to perform your initial tests (even if your playlist has an email or SharePoint list as its destination).

With the current license model, there are no limitations on the number of playlists, visuals or recipients. However, there are certain aspects that must be taken into account regarding the performance of the system:

• The rendering speed is directly related to the number of cores of the machine where the PowerBI Robots agent is installed. For e.g. an Octa Core processor will render your playlist twice as fast as a Quad Core processor.
• The Power BI dataset, used on the reports, must also be able to support multiple requests and be as fast as possible.
• If your playlist has the same visual with the same filter sent to 100 recipients, only one image render will occur. However, if you have 100 different filters, the image will render 100 times meaning that the delivery of the playlist may take up to 1 hour, for this example (each visual may take around 30/40 seconds to render).

At DevScope's blog you can find a PowerBI Robots 101-tutorial or a 4-step quick guide which enables you to quickly set up our report automation system.

You can also visit the YouTube page for video tutorials.

Please make sure that:

• Confirm that the "My ID" is the same at both PowerBI Robots Web and Agent

  

• You have downloaded and installed the latest version of the PowerBI Robots agent

• Synchronize your playlists at the Agent before testing/sending them

• Confirm the status of your license on your PowerBI Robots agent - it must say “Valid”

However, this feature requires technical expertise to set up (if you want to do so, read this intuitive tutorial at our blog or follow the instructions at PowerBI Robots backoffice at the "Help Center" tab).

The emails are sent by your SMTP server and you need to enter the correct information. Please confirm the SMTP "Host" and "Port" are correct, also, please ask your IT team to choose which SMTP security fits your needs, if you go to the "Providers tab at the PowerBI Robots Agent you will be able to choose one of the following options:

• Auto - the application will decide which SSL or TLS options to use (default). If the server does not support SSL or TLS, then the connection will continue without any encryption.
• None - No SSL or TLS encryption should be used.
• SSL or TLS - The connection should use SSL or TLS encryption immediately.
• TLS - Elevates the connection to use TLS encryption immediately after reading the greeting and capabilities of the server. If the server does not support the STARTTLS extension, then the connection will fail
• TLS (when available) - Elevates the connection to use TLS encryption immediately after reading the greeting and capabilities of the server, but only if the server supports the STARTTLS extension.

If you have Office365 or Gmail account you can just select from the dropdown "SMTP Config" the value and PowerBI Robots will fill automatically. You only need to enter your email and password to send the emails.

The only information collected on the PowerBI Robots web application is the user's email when a new account is created. That email is used to identify the user and send him or her notifications regarding PowerBI Robots such as updates or policy changes. That email may also be used to market DevScope products or services. We never share or sell our users' email contact or other information to third-party companies. Users may opt-out of these marketing emails at any time by accessing their account. The PowerBI website also uses a cookie (a small text file) with the sole purpose of facilitating the authentication process of returning users. Please refer to your browser's policy to learn how to disable and delete cookies.

The PowerBI Robots agent doesn't collect any personal information. All information used on the PowerBI Robots agent is stored locally, on the user's infrastructure.

When entering your Power BI account’s credentials, you will be prompted with any information needed to login. When using a SMTP account with MFA enabled, you need to create an application password. For more details, please follow this link.

The schedule is not on our system; it's a local scheduler. We use a HangFire-based scheduler running locally on the machine alongside the PowerBI Robots Agent. We did this by design so our servers wouldn’t store any info regarding the data content itself or any credentials that you own. The only thing we store on our servers is the playlist you generate, containing PowerBI URL addresses and filters. These playlists are stored locally and encrypted using local machine security in the file “PBIRobotsService.config”, located in the app folder.

Images and PDFs are always generated locally, i.e., on the computer running the agent. If you choose to send your report playlist to PowerBI Robots Cloud, the generated images are uploaded to an Azure Blob Storage owned by DevScope. When you select this open, that’s explicitly stated in the web app, and you must accept it. You also have the option to do this locally (please refer to the Slideshow tab on the web agent’s Helper to learn how to do it). If you generate PDFs or the target is a file system, the generated content is stored locally or where you specify it.

There are two points in time where we ask for the user's Power BI credentials: when configuring the agent and when creating the playlist. We ask for credentials because the only way to display and generate images form Power BI is by using the Power BI SDK, and we need to provide PowerBI with a security token to access its data. This security token is returned by the Power BI SDK and is always stored locally as a session cookie with an expiration date and following the OAuth protocol.

• DevScope doesn't save/store the web application's access token on the server side. These tokens are session-wide only and stored in a cookie on the client's browser On the Agent Service app, the token is stored and encrypted locally on the client/user’s computer;
• All security follows Microsoft's guidelines for accessing the Power BI API and uses the provided Microsoft SDKs;
• The permissions required by our app are explicitly defined in its Azure directory;

DevScope guarantees that no tokens are ever used because they aren't saved on our servers at any point of the workflow. They are always saved locally, either on the client's browser or the agent’s computer. We went through a big engineering effort to guarantee that we don’t keep any Microsoft security credentials on our side

We have a multipurpose support team dedicated to our products.

When testing our solutions with the trial version, our team will answer any pre-sales questions about licensing, purchase methods, resellers, etc. Questions related to technical issues/bugs may also be analysed and answered by our team (in a maximum of 2 tickets/interactions) but online support is not included in this stage.

Any support hour must be estimated and charged by the unit (30 minutes) at the rate of 150€/hour. It is also possible to celebrate a maintenance contract with DevScope. For more information, please contact us at support@devscope.net.

DevScope's support team works Monday to Friday from 9.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m GMT Timezone. All tickets will be sorted by urgency and redirected to the correct department. First contact will occur within 48 hours after entering our support platform.

To know more about about PowerBI Robots, just visit DevScope's blog or access our YouTube channel.

License generation may take 48 hours upon your purchase. You will receive an email containing your license key information and product support information (if applicable).

PowerBI Robots may be used with a Power BI Pro account and in case you already have a Power BI Embedded subscription, PowerBI Robots has the ability to manage your embedded capacity.