How Does SSRS Integrate with Power BI?

Combining the strengths of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Power BI might seem tricky, but it's a powerful way to modernize your company's analytics. SSRS is fantastic for pixel-perfect, operational reports - think invoices and formal statements - while Power BI excels at creating interactive, visually rich dashboards. This article will show you exactly how to integrate these two tools to create a unified reporting experience.

A Quick Refresher: SSRS vs. Power BI

Before diving into the integration steps, let's briefly touch on what makes each tool unique and why you'd want to use them together. They were built to solve different problems, and understanding their core purpose makes their integration much more valuable.

What is SSRS?

SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) is a server-based reporting platform that's been a workhorse for businesses for years. Its main strength lies in creating detailed, paginated reports optimized for printing or exporting to formats like PDF and Excel. It's the go-to tool for when the layout and accuracy need to be exact.

• Best For: Operational reports like sales invoices, financial statements, mailing labels, inventory lists, and official compliance documents.
• Key Feature: "Pixel-perfect" control. You can design a report to look precisely the same whether it's viewed on screen, printed on paper, or exported as a PDF.
• Environment: Traditionally an on-premises solution, installed on a local server.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is Microsoft's modern, cloud-focused business analytics service. It's designed for self-service data discovery and interactive visualization. With Power BI, you can connect to hundreds of data sources, build dynamic dashboards, and explore your data by clicking, filtering, and drilling down into charts and graphs.

• Best For: Analytical dashboards, ad-hoc data exploration, tracking KPIs, and sharing interactive insights with your team.
• Key Feature: Interactivity. Users aren't just reading a static report, they're actively exploring the data to uncover trends and patterns.
• Environment: Primarily a cloud service (Power BI Service), but also includes the Power BI Desktop application for report authoring.

Why Integrate Them?

Many organizations have years of investment in SSRS, with hundreds of critical paginated reports already built. Abandoning them is not an option. At the same time, they want to embrace the interactive, self-service capabilities of Power BI. Integration gives you the best of both worlds: a single portal where your team can access both the structured, operational reports from SSRS and the dynamic, analytical dashboards from Power BI. It's about bridging the gap between legacy systems and modern analytics.

Method 1: Power BI Report Server (The Ultimate On-Premises Solution)

The most comprehensive way to integrate SSRS and Power BI is by using Power BI Report Server. Think of it as the next evolution of SSRS - it is, quite literally, SSRS with the ability to host Power BI reports added on top.

Power BI Report Server is an on-premises server that you install and manage in your own data center. Its web portal can host and render both traditional SSRS paginated reports (.rdl files) and modern Power BI reports (.pbix files), providing a single, unified experience for your users.

This is the perfect solution for companies with strict data governance policies or those who aren’t ready to move their entire analytics stack to the cloud. You get the modern feel of Power BI while keeping all your data behind your firewall.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Power BI Report Server

Getting Power BI Report Server running involves a few key steps. While this is a high-level overview, it will give you a clear map of the process.

1. Check Your Licensing

This is the first and most important step. Power BI Report Server isn't free. You can license it in one of two ways:

• Power BI Premium: If your organization has a Power BI Premium capacity license (P1-P3 SKUs), your license for Power BI Report Server is included.
• SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance: If you have this license for your SQL Server instance, you also have the rights to install and run Power BI Report Server.

2. Download and Install Power BI Report Server

Once your licensing is in order, you can download the installer from the Microsoft Download Center. It’s a dedicated installer separate from SQL Server itself. Run the installer on the server where you plan to host your reports.

3. Configure the Report Server

After installation, you’ll use the Report Server Configuration Manager to set everything up. This application walks you through the essential configurations:

• Service Account: Set up the Windows account the server will use to run its services.
• Web Service URL: Configure the URL that applications will use to connect to your report server.
• Database: This is a crucial part. The Report Server needs a dedicated SQL Server database to store report definitions, metadata, and cached data. The wizard will help you create two databases: ReportServer and ReportServerTempDB.
• Web Portal URL: Configure the user-facing URL where people will go to access and view reports.

Once these are configured and you get green checkmarks for each step, your server is ready to go.

4. Install the Right Version of Power BI Desktop

This is a detail that trips many people up. You cannot use the standard, monthly-updated version of Power BI Desktop (the one you get from the Windows Store) to create reports for Power BI Report Server. You need to download a specific version called Power BI Desktop (optimized for Power BI Report Server).

This version is updated on a synchronized release schedule with the Report Server (typically three times a year) to ensure compatibility. You can find the download link for it on the same page as the Report Server download.

5. Create and Deploy Your Reports

Now for the fun part. You can create content in two ways:

• For Power BI Reports: Build your report in the optimized Power BI Desktop application. When you're ready to publish, instead of clicking "Publish," you'll go to File > Save As and select Power BI Report Server. You'll then enter your Report Server URL and save the .pbix file directly to the portal.
• For SSRS Reports: You'll continue to use Visual Studio with SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) to design your paginated .rdl reports. You can deploy them to your new Power BI Report Server just like you would to a standard SSRS instance.

Once deployed, visiting the Web Portal URL will show you a clean interface with folders containing all your reports - both Power BI and SSRS - listed together.

Method 2: Pin SSRS Visuals to a Power BI Cloud Dashboard

What if you don't need a full on-premises server and your team is already using the cloud-based Power BI service? There's a lighter, faster integration method for you: pinning items from an SSRS report directly to a Power BI dashboard.

This approach connects your existing on-premises SSRS instance (2016 or later) to your cloud-based Power BI workspace. It allows you to select specific visuals - like charts, gauges, maps, and tables - from an SSRS report and "pin" them as tiles on a Power BI dashboard. This is a great way to create a high-level "single pane of glass" that surfaces key metrics from both on-prem reports and cloud data sources.

How it Works

1. Configure SSRS for Power BI Integration: An administrator needs to go into the SSRS Configuration Manager and register the report server with Azure Active Directory and Power BI. This establishes the necessary trust between your on-prem server and the cloud service.
2. Find the Pin to Power BI Button: Once enabled, logged-in users viewing an SSRS report in the web portal will see a "Pin to Power BI Dashboard" button on the toolbar.
3. Select a Visual and Pin It: Clicking this button puts the report into "pin mode." The user just has to click on the chart or gauge they want, choose the destination Power BI dashboard, and confirm.
4. View in Power BI Service: The pinned SSRS visual now appears as a tile on the Power BI dashboard in the cloud. Clicking that tile will seamlessly redirect the user back to the full SSRS report on your on-prem server for more detail. The tiles will automatically refresh with new data on a set schedule.

Pros and Cons of Pinning

• Pros: Very easy for end-users to set up. Doesn't require installing new server software. Great for quickly creating oversight dashboards that pull in KPIs from legacy SSRS reports.
• Cons: The pinned tiles are essentially snapshots, they are not fully interactive like native Power BI visuals. The interactivity lives in the source SSRS report. You can only pin individual items, not an entire report page.

Which Method Should You Choose?

Deciding between the two methods comes down to your organization's infrastructure strategy and reporting needs.

Choose Power BI Report Server if...

• You have strict data sovereignty or on-premises policies that prohibit moving data to the cloud.
• You want a single, consolidated portal for all your reports, both paginated and interactive.
• You need fully interactive Power BI reports hosted entirely within your own network.
• You have a significant existing footprint of SSRS reports and want a path to modernization without a "rip-and-replace" project.

Choose Pinning SSRS Visuals if...

• Your organization has a "cloud-first" strategy and primarily uses the Power BI Service.
• You just want to pull a few key metrics from existing on-prem SSRS reports into a centralized cloud dashboard.
• You're happy with high-level monitoring tiles that link back to the source SSRS report for deep dives.
• You want a fast, lightweight solution without deploying and managing another on-prem server.

Final Thoughts

Whether you choose the all-in-one on-premises Power BI Report Server or the nimble approach of pinning visuals to the cloud, integrating SSRS and Power BI provides a clear path for modernizing your reporting. You can honor your investment in existing SSRS reports while empowering users with the interactive power of Power BI.

The need to stitch together tools like this highlights a broader challenge in analytics. Companies often spend enormous amounts of time connecting data sources, wrangling spreadsheets, and toggling between different platforms just to get a clear picture of performance. We founded Graphed because we believe data analysis shouldn't be so fragmented. By connecting all your marketing and sales data a single time, we let you ask questions in plain English to instantly create real-time, cross-platform dashboards, saving you the headache of manual reporting and tool integration.