Blueprint + PowerBI Dashboards

Updated by Tony Higgins

Blueprint's built-in dashboards can be augmented with additional, customizable dashboards powered by Microsoft PowerBI. These PowerBI Dashboards are displayed directly within Blueprint via iFrame.

Pre-defined PowerBI Dashboards are provided out of the box. With PowerBI, these can be modified or entirely new dashboards can be created.

Dashboards are not limited to PowerBI. Dashboard visualizations in Blueprint utilize iFrames, so any visualization that utilizes iFrames can be displayed in Blueprint.

Pre-Defined PowerBI Dashboards

Value Analysis

Maintenance Analysis

Operational Analysis

Commands Analysis

Creating PowerBI Dashboards

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Step 1: A PowerBI Report containing dashboards must be created first before going further.

Once Step 1 above has been completed, users can then configure Blueprint to display the dashboards. The graphic below illustrates the flow of information to create the dashboards.

  • Data for a selected Blueprint scope (i.e. Project or Folder within a project) is extracted from Blueprint using a Blueprint Utility and output to a spreadsheet.
  • PowerBI desktop, using the provided project template, pulls data from the spreadsheet and automatically populates pre-defined dashboards which are then published to PowerBI cloud.
  • When the Blueprint user opens the Custom dashboard in Blueprint, it presents the dashboards published to PowerBI cloud in the previous step

Use Blueprint Utility to Create Excel Workbook

  1. Run the Blueprint Utility. Enter the Blueprint URL and your credentials. Then enter the numeric ID of the project or folder whose data you want to export. Once the report has been generated, download the Excel file.
  2. Rename the Excel file to something relevant (e.g. "valuemapping data for project X")
  3. Open the Excel file and in the sheet "OperationalStatsArtifact" sheet, enter values into the two columns "Value per Hour" and "Maintenance Cost", then save, then close the workbook.
    1. Value per Hour: This is an estimate of how much business value in dollars is produced every hour the bot is run
    2. Maintenance Cost: This is an estimate of the maintenance cost in dollars of the bot for the time-window of operational data (e.g. week, month, quarter)

Use PowerBI Desktop to Create Dashboards to Cloud

  1. Download the PowerBI Template Project, rename if desired, then open the file in PowerBI Desktop
  2. In PowerBI Desktop select File -> Options and Settings -> Data Source Settings
  3. Click the Change Source button at the bottom and select the spreadsheet exported in Step 1. Click OK and then Close to dismiss the pop-up
  4. In the yellow bar that appears, choose Apply Changes. The spreadsheet will then be accessed and the data is refreshed. If successful, the pop-up will disappear when complete and the dashboards will reflect the new data
  5. In the ribbon, click the Publish button and follow the prompts to publish the report to PowerBI cloud

In the next section you'll configure Blueprint to display the dashboards you just published.

Configuring Blueprint to Display PowerBI Dashboards

First, Custom Dashboards must be enabled to display PowerBI dashboards within Blueprint.

  1. From Settings, expand RPA Management
  2. Select Migrate - Dashboards
  3. Choose the Custom tab and check the box for Enable Custom Dashboards
  1. Complete the fields displayed as follows:
    1. Name of Custom Dashboard: Enter a name that will appear as a label for dashboard selection in the user area
    2. Title: Enter a title for the dashboard. The title is only used internally by Blueprint to manage connections, the Title will not appear to end users.
    3. URL: Enter the URL of the PowerBI report. You can get this URL from PowerBI Cloud as follows:
      1. Open the PowerBI report that you wish to embed in Blueprint
      2. In the PowerBI report, Select File -> Embed report -> Website or portal
      3. Two values will appear. Copy the first one "Here's a link you can use to embed this content", and paste into the URL field in Blueprint

Once these setting have been configured properly, you should see an additional Dashboard in your user area that uses the name you entered in Name of Custom Dashboard.

Refreshing the Dashboards

The data in the dashboards can be refreshed as follows:

  1. Perform the steps in the above section, Use Blueprint Utility to Create Excel Workbook, to create an updated Excel workbook
  2. Rename the Excel file to the name you defined earlier in Use Blueprint Utility to Create Excel Workbook
  3. In PowerBI Desktop, open the same project as referenced earlier, and click Refresh in the top ribbon
  4. Once the refresh operation has completed, click Publish in the top ribbon and follow the prompts to publish the report to PowerBI cloud

To Access the Dashboard

  1. Choose RPA Dashboards and Reports in the main header
  2. Click the tab with the name of your custom dashboard

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