New Power BI update lets you add parameters to a URL

3 min. read

Updated onOctober 4, 2023

updated onOctober 4, 2023

Share this article

Improve this guide

Read our disclosure page to find out how can you help Windows Report sustain the editorial teamRead more

After receiving anew set of capacity settingsto give more control to admins,Power BI‘s August updatebrought newfeatureslike grouping and Analytics.

Power BI gets URL parameters for Paginated Reports

Now,Microsofthas released a newupdateto introduce the supportfor URL parameters for paginated reports in thePower BIservice.

In other words, report authors now have the ability to sendcommands to paginated reports inPower BIby just adding a parameter to a URL.

When you create a report parameterinPower BIReport Builder, you set a parameter name. If you want to use report parameters, you’ll have to addrp:in front of the parameter name forPower BIto recognize it in the URL.

For example, to set a report parameter in an URL, you’ll have to userp:parameter=value.

Here’s how Christopher Finlan, Principal Program Manager forPower BIisdescribingthe use of URL parameters:

So if I want to specify a value for the “Salesperson” parameter for my report in an app, I’d use the following URL:https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/apps/xxxxxxx-c4c4-4217-afd9-3920a0d1e2b0/rdlreports/b1d5e659-639e-41d0-b733-05d2bca9853c?rp:Salesperson=Tiggee

If “Salesperson” was instead a multi-value parameter that accepted multiple values, I can use an & to add an additional parameter value to my URL like so –https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/rdlreports/xxxxxxx-abc7-40f0-b456-febzf9cdda4d?rp:Salesperson=Tie+Bear&rp:Salesperson=Mickey

The new Generate Link feature easily integrates with URL parameters

Furthermore,Microsoftalso announced the introduction of a newfeaturethis week called Generate Link.

Thisfeatureaims to help with the discovery of the parameter names by generating a link of thecurrent report with the parameter values appended to the URL.

Also, besides report parameters, you can set the export format of your report in the URL. Using therdl:prefix will allow you to set the output format in which the report can be downloaded directly into the URL.

Here’s how it should look like if the output format is designated as PDF:

https://app.powerbi.com/groups/me/apps/xxxxxxx-c4c4-4217-afd9-3920a0d1e2b0/rdlreports/b1d5e659-639e-41d0-b733-05d2bca9853c?rp:Salesperson=Tiggee&rdl:format=PDF

If you want to learn more about URL parameters and see more examples, be sure to checkMicrosoft’s official documentation page.

New Power BI update lets you add parameters to a URL#

Power BI gets URL parameters for Paginated Reports#

The new Generate Link feature easily integrates with URL parameters#

New Power BI update lets you add parameters to a URL

Power BI gets URL parameters for Paginated Reports

The new Generate Link feature easily integrates with URL parameters