BI Helper is hosted in the AWS US East-1 region.

BI Helper opens your Power BI report in embedded mode and applies the defined filter/ slicer values to it. Tableau reports are accessed via their APIs. It then snapshots the individual tabs as image files and combines them into a high-quality PDF/ PPTX.  

BI Helper repeats the process to generate a PDF/ PPTX for each input value, then emails each one to the specified end-users.

Yes, as long as you define the field as a slicer or report level filter (Filters on all pages) in Power BI and provide it as the input to BI Helper.

In Tableau, define the field as a workbook filter, then provide it as the input to BI Helper.

You can enter them in the input table in BI Helper or use the given template to upload them as an Excel/ CSV file. Premium subscribers can use the automated input mode to apply the latest filter and slicer values before every job run.

BI Helper uses AWS SES (Simple Email Service) to send your PDF/ PPTX reports to end-users. You can define and validate any sender email ID of your choice in BI Helper. In fact, you can set up a different sender email for every job based on your report and its audience. E.g., sales@mycompany.com, operations@mycompany.com, ITreports@mycompany.com.

BI Helper has a standard process to authenticate sender email IDs by making them DMARC compliant. This ensures that leading providers like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo recognize that the emails are legitimate, and they are not spam or phishing emails. See Email Authentication in BI Helper for details.

In the Standard license, BI Helper creates the PDF/ PPTX files in a batch for each job run and saves them in the user's AWS S3 bucket. It then emails and deletes them immediately.

In the Premium license, BI Helper creates and emails the output files in each job run and also stores them in the user's AWS S3 bucket for 5 days, after which they are deleted.

Yes, Premium subscribers can split the creation and emailing of reports into independent processes. It is not supported in the Standard license.

Premium users can disable the Send Email functionality in their jobs before generating the PDF/ PPTX reports. These reports are stored in AWS S3 for 5 days, after which they are deleted. In this time, users can download them from our SFTP server, review the files, then go back to BI Helper and email them.

No, the only software you need to run BI Helper is a browser. Create your account at BI Helper - Sign Up, set up your Power BI or Tableau reports as BI Helper jobs and get started with running them.

BI Helper does not impose any page count or file size limits on the generated PDF/ PPTX files. However, AWS SES (which BI Helper uses to send emails) sets a limit of 40 MB per email including attachments.

Premium subscribers can generate PDF/ PPTX files larger than 40 MB and download them from our SFTP server. These large files cannot be sent via BI Helper, and users need to set up other methods to distribute them.

You can set up and run as many Power BI and Tableau reports and BI Helper jobs as you want. Set up your reports as BI Helper jobs based on filter/ slicer selection, runtime schedules and other business requirements. This applies to both Standard and Premium subscriptions.

Yes, BI Helper is designed to handle report volumes of all sizes. In our benchmarking tests, BI Helper has generated up to 1,000 PDF/ PPTX reports per job in one hour.

Based on job sizes and schedules, BI Helper dynamically spins up servers and other resources on AWS to generate PDF/ PPTX reports in multiple parallel threads. These can be further customized to meet your throughput requirements.

Power BI: When BI Helper opens your Power BI report in embedded mode, your report stays in your tenant. BI Helper does not have permission to read and copy your reports or their underlying datasets. BI Helper can only view your Power BI report pages, snapshot them as images and combine them into a PDF/ PPTX, as noted above.
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Tableau: To restrict access to your report data, you can define the Tableau APIs to which BI Helper has permissions.

No, it doesn't. BI Helper uses OAuth to connect to Power BI and Tableau, which is at the user level and not at the organization level. This means that BI Helper can only view Power BI or Tableau reports accessible to the user who is logged in.

Recommended: Create a Power BI or Tableau service account for BI Helper with access only to the reports which you want to run on BI Helper. Use this service account to run your BI Helper jobs.

Your credentials are secure with BI Helper. Your Power BI OAuth2 and Tableau API tokens are encrypted using AES 256 and stored in the application database. They are not human-readable, not even by the BI Helper admins.

BI Helper has multiple data security safeguards including data encryption, virtual network, multi-factor authentication, detailed alerts and logging.

BI Helper operates within the security framework of your organization. Because it uses OAuth to connect to Power BI or Tableau, its permissions are limited to that of the user who is logging in, and to the information security policies applied to that individual.

BI Helper further restricts its access by only requesting for view access to your reports. It cannot copy your reports or their underlying datasets to our tenant.  

Yes, BI Helper supports Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) with Power BI. No manual intervention is required to run your jobs to create and email your PDF/ PPTX reports.

BI Helper uses OAuth to connect to the user's workspaces and reports in Power BI and Tableau. To secure this access, we recommend that you:

1. Create a Power BI or Tableau service account for BI Helper, with access limited to the reports which you want to run on BI Helper.
2. Do not allow this service account to access any other IT resources of your organization.
3. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for this account and let BI Helper login using MFA.

Yes, BI Helper has an automated input mode to fetch filter/ slicer values and recipient email IDs from your Power BI data model or Tableau report. See this tutorial to Automate Filter and Slicer Input.

BI Helper provides error alerts by email at the individual PDF/ PPTX level, i.e., for each filter/ slicer + email combination.

During and after job execution, you can go to the Job History tab to see which reports were generated successfully and which ones failed. This tab shows the history of the last 15 job runs.

No, it doesn’t. Since BI Helper snapshots your report tabs as image files, rather than reading the underlying dataset, it does not support scrolling of visuals.

However, the Premium license allows you to export table and matrix visuals to Excel and attach them in your emails along with the PDF/ PPTX reports. The Excel files support full vertical and horizontal scrolling of the table or matrix.

The BI Helper Premium license allows you to export table and matrix visuals from Power BI or Tableau to Excel and send them as email attachments along with the PDF/ PPTX. The Excel files are filtered on the same values as the PDF/ PPTX. For more details, see this tutorial to Automate the export of Power BI table and matrix visuals to Excel.