Send Automatic Power BI Notifications to Email, Mobile Device and Microsoft Teams

Power BI is becoming an indispensable enterprise tool for re-imagining business processes, monitoring work flow and reporting. Adding automatic notifications makes this good thing even better.

Power BI

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Access to Power BI service (free license works)
• Access to an already published report in the Power BI service
• Access to an already published dashboard with pinned tiles in the Power BI service
• Access to Microsoft Power Automate (free license works)
• Power Automate and/or Power BI on mobile devices (for push notification)
• Access to Teams

Here’s how you’ll set up notifications:

Set a Power BI dashboard tile alert

1. Go to the Power BI service at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/ or click the app within https://portal.office.com and, if prompted, sign in.
2. Select the desired workspace and click the desired dashboard.
3. Click the ellipsis menu in the top-right corner of a tile on the dashboard and select Manage alerts.
4. Click Add alert rule.
   
5. Toggle the alert on and set a condition. If you want to be alerted when values fall below a certain level, choose below. If you want to be alerted when values exceed a certain level, choose above. Then enter a number in the Threshold field.
   
6. Next, choose the maximum notification frequency. This is how often this alert will notify you.
7. You can choose to have Power BI send you an email, too. If all you need is too personally receive alerts or an email from Power BI, then you’re done. Unfortunately, you cannot send other people an email from these options but we deal with that using Power Automate.

Use the Power BI alert as a trigger in Power Automate

1. After completing the steps above to create a Power BI alert, navigate to Power Automate from https://flow.microsoft.com or by clicking the Power Automate app within https://portal.office.com.
2. Click Create in the left-hand pane.
3. Click Automated flow.
   
4. Give your new flow a name and in the Search all triggers box, type power. This will display at least one trigger – When a data driven alert is triggered.
5. Click the trigger to select it and then click the Create button.
6. The new flow opens for editing with the first step of the flow shown.
   
7. Select the desired Alert Id by clicking the drop-down arrow to select an item. The alerts listed here should be well-known to you because they will include the name of the alert from your dashboard tiles. Click the desired alert.

Use the Power BI trigger to send a Power Automate push notification to yourself

1. Click the New step button.
2. In the resulting search box, type notifications.
3. Click the Send me a mobile notification action.
   
4. Enter your chosen text and optionally include a link.
5. Save your flow and test it or just save it and let it run when the alert is triggered.
6. Here’s what the notification looks like in an iPhone’s notification center:
   

Use the Power BI alert to send an email to other people

1. After completing the steps above to create a Power BI alert and a Power BI trigger in Power Automate add a new step to your flow by clicking the New step button in your flow.
2. In the resulting search box, type send email.
3. You have two options: either click the Outlook365 Send an email action or the Outlook365 Send an email from a shared mailbox action. Both options send an email to other recipients but the first option sends emails with your name in the To field and the shared mailbox option does not. To use the shared mailbox action, you will need proper permissions to use any specific shared mailbox.
4. In the flow, complete any required fields for sending an email (mailbox field, to, subject, body). Optionally, add any users or groups that should be cc’d and set a message importance level.
5. Save your flow and test it or just save it and let it run when the alert is triggered.

Use the Power BI alert to post a message in Microsoft Teams

1. After completing the steps above to create a Power BI alert and a Power BI trigger in Power Automate add a new step to your flow by clicking the New step button in your flow.
2. In the resulting search box, type teams.
3. You have two options: either click the Post a message (V3) action or the Post a message as the Flow bot to a channel action. Both options post messages but the first option posts with your name and the other option does not. Post a message as the Flow bot to a channel will mention you at the bottom of the message with a little advertisement for Power Automate, however.
4. After selecting either option, complete the Team, Channel, and Message fields. Optionally, add a subject if you pick the Post a message as the Flow bot to a channel action.
5. Save your flow and test it or just save it and let it run when the alert is triggered.