Microsoft Power BI

What this connects

A read-only view of your business data to Power BI datasets and reports.

Supported workflows

• Refreshing a report against live data rather than a monthly export
• Building dashboards on the same figures the operational system uses
• Sharing reports through Power BI to people who never open the business system

Data exchanged

• Read-only rows from the tables in scope
• No writes back from Power BI

Setup requirements

• A Power BI licence
• A read-only connection scoped to the tables you approve
• Agreement on refresh frequency

Permissions required

• Read access to the specific data in scope, nothing wider

Security and privacy

• Data is transmitted over encrypted connections (TLS).
• Credentials and tokens are stored server-side and never exposed to the browser.
• Access can be revoked at any time from the provider's own account settings.

Known limitations

Stated plainly, because finding these out during implementation is worse than knowing them now.

• Read-only by design. Nothing in Power BI writes back to your business data.
• Refresh frequency is bounded by what the connection is sized for, not by Power BI.