Power BI Integration

Import Power BI Semantic Models and Power BI Reports into Entropy Data, and turn them into governed data products.

The Power BI integration ingests semantic models and reports from one or more Power BI workspaces into Entropy Data as assets. From there, you can create data products of type Power BI Semantic Model or Power BI Report to manage them like any other data product in your organization.

When to import a Power BI asset as a Data Product

We recommend creating a data product for a Power BI Semantic Model or Report whenever the asset is not just used internally but is something you want to keep track of across the organization. This lets you see which reports use which semantic models, and how those connect to other data products in your company.

Reports relevant to running your business — especially those published to other organizational units — should be part of the data products in Entropy Data. You then get the full power of Entropy Data to make these data products discoverable: classification, quality metrics, status, confidentiality, and more — all available for a Power BI data product to drive adoption and clarity for your business.

We do not recommend mirroring the complete Power BI workspace structure in Entropy Data. Internal reports and experimental semantic models can stay solely in Power BI, since ownership, access, and governance are not yet needed at that stage.

Prerequisites

The integration authenticates against the Power BI REST API using a Microsoft Entra ID Service Principal that has been granted access to each workspace it should sync.

1. Set up a Service Principal

Register a new application in Microsoft Entra ID and create a Service Principal for it. Microsoft provides detailed instructions for the registration. For the rest of this guide we assume the principal is named Entropy Data Power BI Integration.

If you already use the Custom Entra application option for Open in Power BI, you can either reuse that application or register a separate one for the import.

2. Allow the Service Principal in Power BI

Service Principal access to Power BI is granted in two steps: enable Service Principals at the tenant level, then add the principal to each workspace it should sync.

2.1 Allow Service Principals to call Fabric APIs

1. Navigate to the Power BI Admin portal.
2. In the left sidebar, select Tenant Settings.
3. Use your browser search to find the entry Service principals can call Fabric public APIs.
4. Expand the section and select Enabled.
5. Optionally restrict the setting to a specific security group containing the Service Principal.

2.2 Add the Service Principal to a workspace

Once the tenant allows Service Principals, you can add them to individual workspaces. Open the workspace and navigate to Manage Access → Add People or groups, then search for the principal you registered in step 1.

Choose the role according to your integration needs:

• For read-only ingestion of semantic models and reports, Viewer is sufficient.
• If you also want to use Open in Power BI to create new semantic models in this workspace, the role must be at least Member.

3. Extract the credentials

You need the Tenant ID, Client ID, and Client Secret of the application you registered. The procedure mirrors the Custom Entra application setup for Open in Power BI:

• Find the Tenant ID and Client ID on the application's Overview page in the Entra portal.
• Create a Client Secret under Certificates & secrets and copy its value — it is shown only once.

Setting up the integration

You need an Entropy Data Enterprise License or the Cloud Edition. On self-hosted, set APPLICATION_INGESTIONS_ENABLED to true in your environment to enable integrations. See Configuration for the full reference.

To create the integration, navigate to Settings > Integrations > Add Integration and select Fabric/Power BI in the wizard. Configure:

• Credentials — Tenant ID, Client ID, and Client Secret of your Service Principal.
• Filters — restrict which workspaces, semantic models, and reports are synchronized. Both include and exclude filters are supported, with * as a wildcard.
• Schedule — pick a predefined schedule or use a cron expression.
• Name — choose a unique name for the integration.

Note: Credentials are stored encrypted in the Entropy Data database. To enable encryption on self-hosted, set a 64 hex character APPLICATION_ENCRYPTION_KEYS in your environment (see Configuration).

Note: All schedules use the UTC timezone. Please do not synchronize more than once or twice per day; we reserve the right to disable integrations that exceed this. Manual runs are always available for immediate updates.

You can review the integration status and the last 10 runs at any time under Settings > Integrations.

Power BI Semantic Models and Reports as Data Products

Each integration run imports the semantic models and reports from the configured workspaces as assets in Entropy Data. From an asset, you can create a data product to govern it.

Importing a Semantic Model as a Data Product

After the first integration run, ingested semantic models are available as the source for new data products. Navigate to Studio > Data Products > Add Data Product and select Import from Microsoft Fabric to create a data product of type Power BI Semantic Model. The data product's output port reflects the structure of the semantic model, so consumers can see which tables and columns are exposed.

Business-level lineage with Power BI

When semantic models and reports are imported as data products, lineage in Entropy Data spans from the underlying source data product all the way to the consuming Power BI report:

• A Snowflake or Databricks source data product feeds a Power BI Semantic Model data product.
• One or more Power BI Report data products consume the semantic model.
• Each step shows ownership, classification, and access on the data product page.

Combined with the Open in Power BI feature, you get a single, business-level view of how data flows from your operational sources, through governed Power BI semantic models, into the reports your business runs on.