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Tag: Admin

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Power BI Admin APIs to return a list of email subscriptions

Get Dashboard Subscriptions brings back a list of everyone who has subscribed to a dashboard

What is a Power BI Subscription?

Subscriptions are a great way to assign yourself and other users to get emails regarding report content.

There are certain governance rules we follow.

  1. Report viewers views content via an app. We don’t want report viewers coming into the App workspace. we want them to see carefully selected and brought together content.
  2. If we use Subscriptions we want to push though a really nice screen shot of a report that changes and gets the users wanting to come and see more content within that app. therefore we always have a report or dashboard with visuals that don’t need scroll bars to engage the viewer so they want to see more.
  3. because of this, we want to be able to subscribe people to App content

Go to an App. Note you can add your Subscription here which is a link to the dashboard

for this example, the App dashboard is subscribed to

then we go to try it out from the Microsoft API Page

Dashboard Subscriptions

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/rest/api/power-bi/admin/dashboards-get-dashboard-subscriptions-as-admin

and try the API

Add the Dashboard ID to parameters

But this is where logic is not quite working (the hope is that this will resolve fairly quickly). The above API doesn’t give you information back if you subscribe via the app. Only when you subscribe to the actual Dashboard in the workspace.

We want all our report viewers accessing the pre built app so this is where the information is most required.

When the user is added to a dashboard subscription in the workspace. The API is tested again.

What this can show us is anyone in the workspaces that has subscribed to the actual dashboard.  We want all viewers with App access.

Get report Subscriptions as Admin

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/rest/api/power-bi/admin/reports-get-report-subscriptions-as-admin

This is the same as above but with reports

Get user Subscriptions as Admin

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/rest/api/power-bi/admin/users-get-user-subscriptions-as-admin

I get my user ID from Azure Active Directory

And see what I’m subscribed too but again, only workspace content

Logically, I feel like our viewers should be subscribing through the apps

this is really good stuff but I feel like they need to resolve the issue with Apps. Apps are the go to areas for users to view content so this is where we want people to subscribe too.

If you look at the information coming back. Here we can see the artifact type is report but there is no where that mentions if the report is in an App or in the workspace and I feel like this is actually important information. I only know because I have tested against both the App and the workspace.

If this could be resolved these APIs would be really useful to help us understand the subscription uptake.

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Power BI October 21 Updates GetUserArtifactAccessAsAdmin API through to PowerShell

There have been some new API updates (September October Power BI 2021) and I thought I would see what they were all about and how you can use them starting with the API mentioned in the October updates.

I haven’t used these APIs before and I thought it would be interesting to see how the documentation holds up.

So the first start at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-october-2021-feature-summary/#post-17563-_Toc84518701

And this links you you to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/rest/api/power-bi/admin/users-get-user-artifact-access-as-admin

So this API returns all the artifacts for a given user which I imagine would be really useful when someone leaves the company and you need to assess the objects that they may own.

To use the API you need to be Power BI admin or Global Admin. I have the Power BI admin so I am good to go.

Delegated permissions are supported. I imagine this needs a lot more investigation as to why and how you would set this up.

There are some limitations, For example you can only make 200 requests per hour. You can click on Try it to try out the API from this URL by logging into your account

But this API’s need you to get the userGraphId. my first question is, What is a userGraphID and how can I get it?

It is mentioned in the documentation. ‘The graph ID of user’

And to be honest that is unhelpful. I have no idea how to get this information to run the API. Its just assumed. I have also asked on the forums and no one else seems to know either.

So to just get an idea of how you would use these APIs, I’m working with one that doesn’t need the userGraphIDhttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/admin/groups-get-groups-as-admin#code-try-0

This will get me out all the objects in power BI and for the time being I just want the top 10.

I added the $expand name and value by creating the name and value and hitting the +

Then hit Run to make sure it works

So where do we use it? Open up Windows Powershell

We can run the commands via Windows Powershell. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/overview?view=powershell-7.1 ISE (Integration Scripting Environment)

powershell_ise.exe

And type in

 login-PowerBI

And now you can create your code

I simply added the URL from the Try it above (Without the Authorisation Line)

Value[0] Simply means give me the first element inside this command and run.

I can go even further an parameterise the URL by doing the following

Param(
[string]$url = 'https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/admin/groups?%24top=10&%24expand=users%2Creports%2Cdashboards%2Cdatasets'
)
login-PowerBI
$result = Invoke-PowerBIRestMethod -Url $url -Method Get 
$workspaceContents = $result | convertFrom-Json
$firstworkspace = $workspacecontents.value[1]
$firstworkspace

This is great

  • But what if I want to automate this and, for example create a json file from it once a month?
  • And what if I don’t want to have to run it as the Power BI Admin?

Back to the original question regarding userGraphId

It seems that many other people have asked this question. I got a possible answer on the Power BI Issues forum saying that the userGraphID is the users Object ID that you can find in azure Active Directory – Users.

So I went into Azure – Azure Active Directory – Users and took my Object ID

I added the Object ID and got the results back that I was hoping for.

Great. This gives all the artifacts that I own. Can I now do this in Powershell like the previous API? Open Powershell again. 

powershell_ise.exe

Can I reuse the Previous Script.

Open my previous Script. InvokePowerBIRESTMethos.ps1

 Param(
    #commented out the other API
    #[string]$url = 'https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/admin/groups?           %24top=10&%24expand=users%2Creports%2Cdashboards%2Cdatasets' 

    [string]$url = 'https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/admin/users/objectID/artifactAccess'

   )

login-PowerBI


$result = Invoke-PowerBIRestMethod -Url $url -Method Get 

$workspaceContents = $result | convertFrom-Json

$firstworkspace = $workspacecontents.value[1]
$firstworkspace

And this works. I get back all my objects

So this is just the initial investigation. To do

  • How to Delegate Permissions for this API?
  • How to Automate the Powershell script and create a dataset to work with?

And even further research

  • can we automate checking between a list of users from Yesterday and today to see who has gone to automate the process even further?
  • Is it possible that Azure can handle use cases where we know the user is leaving and have assigned a leave date in Azure Active Directory?
  • Then Feed this loop into the API to generate this list so we know what reports need to have their ownership taken over
  • Automate the handling of take over accounts