Use BI Helper APIs to Automate Business Intelligence Workflows

What are BI Helper APIs? How do they help users?

BI Helper REST APIs enable users to create and distribute PDF and PPTX reports from Power BI. Available in the Premium and Enterprise plans, BI Helper APIs deliver the full functionality of the application UI. In addition, they support the custom functionality outlined below.

BI Helper APIs eliminate UI based job setup and maintenance, delivering enterprise grade automation and control to BI Helper users.

For more details, see BI Helper API Documentation.

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Getting Started

The main steps to use BI Helper APIs are as follows:

1. Job setup: Create a BI Helper job through the user interface, after which you can start using the APIs to manage them.

2. User authentication: This is handled via API Keys, generated by users from Settings > API Keys in their BI Helper account and passed in the authorization header with the value Bearer<YOUR_API_KEY>.

3. After authentication, users can make API calls for job creation, editing, execution, scheduling and monitoring through secure endpoints.​

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Core Capabilities

The User Jobs API is the main BI Helper API. It provides multiple endpoints for:

• Job Management: List, retrieve, delete or clone jobs.
• Execution Control: Trigger instant runs, stop or pause active jobs or reactivate inactive jobs.
• Scheduling: Use cron expressions for hourly, daily, weekly or monthly frequencies.
• Monitoring: Review execution history with success/ failure counts, status and error details for the last 15 job runs.
• Notifications: Set email alerts with customizable recipients and triggers.

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Other specialized API endpoints include:

GET/POST /api/user-report-configuration to manage active status, time zone, pages to print, canvas size, output format and other parameters for a given user job ID.

GET/POST /api/filter-management for dynamic filter input with names, values, recipients (To/ cc/ bcc as semicolon lists) linked to report tasks.

GET/POST /api/email-configuration to manage from email ID, body, title and signature for a given user job ID.

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Key Use Cases

BI Helper APIs excel in enterprise scenarios with medium to large volumes of PDF/ PPTX reports where scalability and reliability of the automation are very important.

Without logging into the BI Helper application, users can obtain its full functionality using the APIs. They can:

• Automate event-driven report bursts integrated with business systems or schedulers.
• Edit recipient lists, filters or parameters programmatically instead of UI navigation.
• Monitor campaigns for compliance, accessing detailed logs without manual checks.
• Distribute thousands of personalized reports daily across Power BI/ Tableau environments.

Users benefit from token syncing across jobs, deprecated endpoint warnings for smooth migrations and error fields for rapid troubleshooting.

Write to support@bihelper.tech with your use case to understand how BI Helper APIs can support it.

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‍Developer Features and Best Practices

All requests demand proper headers; missing them triggers access denials.

Example workflow: Set up a job from the BI Helper UI, authenticate the API token, then use the API endpoints to run/ update/ monitor the job.

Forward compatibility includes newer filter/ email APIs complementing core edit/ run operations, enabling pre-execution tweaks like slicer overrides.​

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Why BI Helper APIs

BI Helper REST APIs are designed to address a range of requirements that arise when analyzing data and building Power BI reports.

They reduce manual job setup and maintenance and help users harness the full power of BI Helper. Enterprises gain a robust backbone for reporting, helping them focus their efforts on analysis and insights rather than job setup and support.

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