MC248201: Easy to Quickly Create Power BI Reports from Lists

Updated July 8, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Updated June 30, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Updated June 28, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Updated May 23, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Updated April 29, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

Updated March 22, 2022: Microsoft have updated the rollout timeline below for Government organizations. Thank you for your patience.

We are excited to announce the arrival of a new guided authoring experience in Lists that will make it easy to quickly create business intelligence reports in Power BI using your list schema and data. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72175 and 93221.

SharePoint: Microsoft Lists: Visualize with Power BI
Visualize your list in Power BI. This is a new view and author experience that auto-generates an initial report for you based on the information in your list. You can specify fields to create from, or update the visuals shown in the report. If you want more advanced report authoring capabilities, you can move into Edit mode and further refine. To create a report from a list, click the Integrate menu, choose Power BI and then you will see “Visualize the list”.

Enables list users to easily visualize their list data in a Power BI report. The initial report is auto generated. Users can also save that report so that future visitors to the list can view the report.

Affected Workloads

• SharePoint Online
• Power BI

Key points

• Timing:
  • Targeted Release: rolling out in early early May. – Completed
  • Standard Release: rolling out from early June (previously late May) to mid-July (previously early June). – Completed
  • Government: we will begin rolling out in early August (previously early July) and expect to complete by mid-August (previously mid-July).
• Roll-out: tenant level
• Control type: admin control
• Action: review and assess

How this will affect your organization

List users will see a new menu option in Integrate > Power BI > Visualize this list, which allows users to create a new Power BI report using that list. With just one click, you’ll be able to autogenerate a basic report and customize the list columns that are shown in the report. To take further advantage of Power BI’s advanced data visualization capabilities, just go into Edit mode. Once a report is saved and published, it will appear in the same submenu under Integrate > Power BI.

• Users with a Microsoft 365 E5 license or Power BI Pro license will have access to the full report authoring and viewing experience.
• Users without either of the above licenses will be prompted by Power BI to sign up for a 60-day free trial of Power BI Pro when they attempt to save a new report or edit or view an existing report. To turn off self-service sign-up so that the option for a trial is not exposed to List users, click here.
• Users with a Power BI free license may only visualize their list data, but cannot publish nor view reports.

What you need to do to prepare

This feature is default on, but can turned off from the Power BI Admin Portal under Tenant settings.

If this feature is disabled for tenants, users will continue to see the Power BI submenu in the List command bar, but any attempt to create or view a report will result in an error page.

Note: Certain complex column types in Lists such as Person, Location, Rich Text, Multi-select Choice, and Image are not currently supported when the Power BI report is autogenerated.

Learn more

• View and manage Power BI user licenses
• Get started creating in the Power BI service
• Quickly create reports in the Power BI service
• Enable or disable self-service sign-up and purchasing

Message ID: MC248201
Published: 01 April 2021
Updated: 08 July 2022
Effective: May 1, 2022