Question

How do I integrate paginated reports with an external scheduling system?
This question investigates how to connect paginated reports with external scheduling tools or systems. The goal is to leverage the scheduling capabilities of third-party tools to trigger the generation and delivery of reports in Power BI, ensuring they are sent to the correct recipients at the right time, without manual involvement from the report author.

Answer 1

To integrate paginated reports with an external scheduling system, you can leverage the Power BI REST API, Power Automate, or custom scripts to trigger report generation and delivery outside the native Power BI subscription scheduler. This enables better control, flexibility, and alignment with enterprise-wide scheduling tools.

Here’s a common approach:

1. Deploy the paginated report to the Power BI Service (Premium or PPU workspace) or Power BI Report Server.

2. Use Power Automate or an external scheduling tool (like Azure Logic Apps, SQL Agent, or enterprise job schedulers) to trigger the workflow at specified intervals.

3. Within the workflow, call the Power BI REST API to export the paginated report in formats like PDF or Excel using the ExportToFile endpoint.

4. Once the export completes, use email connectors or custom actions in your scheduler to send the report to designated recipients.

For on-premises environments using Power BI Report Server, you can use data-driven subscriptions triggered by SQL Server Agent jobs or other tools. This external integration allows for centralized job control, logging, and more dynamic report distribution logic aligned with business processes.