Can Mail & Deploy send a different Power BI report to every recipient?

Yes. You define one template and the field the report varies by. Mail & Deploy queries the semantic model once and produces one document per distinct value - region, cost centre, account manager - each paired with the right recipient.

Which formats can Power BI reports be exported to?

Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, CSV and XML. The output is built from your template rather than exported from the report, so an Excel workbook keeps its formulas and a Word document keeps its required layout.

Does this replace Power BI subscriptions or work alongside them?

Alongside. Subscriptions remain the simplest way to send the same report to a fixed list. Mail & Deploy covers what sits beyond that: a different document per recipient, formats other than PDF and PowerPoint, and delivery to channels outside the service.

Can one report combine Power BI and Qlik data?

Yes. A single report can draw a chart from Qlik, a table from a Power BI semantic model and a figure from Snowflake, assembled into one branded document.

Do report recipients need a Power BI licence?

Recipients of a Mail & Deploy report receive a finished document through email, Teams, SharePoint or the Hub - they need access to that channel. Whether a Power BI licence is required on the Microsoft side depends on how content is delivered and on your tenant configuration.

Which Power BI licence do I need on the Microsoft side?

Mail & Deploy reads the semantic model through the XMLA endpoint, so the workspace needs Premium, Premium Per User or Fabric capacity; Pro alone is not enough. On that same licence there is no per-user export ceiling and no five-minute window. Everything beyond that depends on your tenant configuration, and we walk through it on a call rather than guess at it here (Microsoft position checked 9 September 2026).

How Mail & Deploy works with Power BI

Mail & Deploy connects to your Power BI semantic model, not to an existing report. What comes out is a new document built from the same data.

That means the output isn't a copy of an existing Power BI report. It's a document built from the same data: an Excel workbook that keeps calculating, a Word document with a required layout, a deck for the board - generated per recipient and delivered on a schedule.

Wondering how this differs from what Power BI does natively? Subscriptions, paginated reports and Power Automate cover a defined scope - where that scope ends is set out on Power BI report automation.

Connect the semantic model

Mail & Deploy connects to the semantic model, not to the report. You authenticate with an Azure Service Principal - tenant ID, client ID and client secret - and select a catalog, which is the combination of a Power BI workspace and a semantic model. From there the model is queried directly and the results land in your template.

No data is copied or duplicated, and the existing workspace and data model stay unchanged. Several catalogs can be connected at the same time, and a single report can draw from more than one of them - including Qlik® and database sources alongside Power BI.

Selecting Power BI as a datasource type and configuring it with an Azure service principal — Choose the datasource type, authenticate with an Azure service principal, select the catalog - workspace and semantic model.

Design the report template

Templates are built in the tools your recipients already use - Excel, Word, PowerPoint, HTML - or in the built-in designer. You place fields and measures into the layout: charts, tables, KPIs, individual values. The surrounding document stays yours, including existing formulas, corporate styling and any structure a regulator expects to see.

An Excel template keeps calculating after delivery. That is the difference between a report and an export: the recipient can keep working in the file rather than starting a new one.

From here on, nothing depends on where the data came from. The template designer, the schedule and the delivery log look the same whether the source is Qlik®, Power BI or a database.

Each additional data source is licensed separately.

Adding a Power BI measure to an Excel template in the Mail & Deploy designer — Find the measure in the datasource browser, create a chart or table element, place it in the template.

Mail & Deploy Designer showing a Word template, content explorer and DAX expression editor for a Power BI measure — The designer surfaces measures from the semantic model; expressions can be edited as DAX or placed as chart and table elements.

Decide who gets which numbers

This is the step that removes the manual work. Instead of one report per recipient group, you define one template and one rule for how it varies.

You pick a column to burst on - region, cost centre, account manager, customer. Mail & Deploy generates one report per distinct value of that column, applies the matching filter to every element in the template, and pairs each output with the right recipient. One template, one execution plan, four hundred different documents.

Recipient table and task editor with cycle-over-values logic for Power BI report bursting — The recipient table drives the run; the task cycles over the values and creates one report per recipient.

Schedule and deliver

Reports run on a schedule - daily, weekly, on the first working day of the month, at a fixed time in a fixed timezone. Execution tasks run in parallel, so a large distribution finishes inside a delivery window rather than trickling out over hours.

Delivery goes to email, file server, FTP, Microsoft SharePoint and Teams, OneDrive, Dropbox, AWS S3, Google Drive, or the Mail & Deploy Hub. Every execution is logged: what ran, what it produced, where it went, and what failed.

Execution calendar with monthly schedule, daily timeline and execution log entry showing a finished email delivery — Calendar view, day timeline and execution log in one place: every run is logged with time, status and recipient.

See it in action

Connecting a Power BI tenant, building the report, automating the delivery - the full sequence in one run.

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What you need in place

Power BI licence with XMLA access: Mail & Deploy reads the semantic model through the XMLA endpoint, which requires Premium, Premium Per User or Fabric capacity - it is not available under Power BI Pro. XMLA read access has to be enabled for that capacity (Microsoft position checked 9 September 2026).
Azure app registration: a registered app with a client secret
Workspace access: the app added as a Member under 'Manage access' in the Power BI workspace
Fabric tenant setting: 'Service principal can call Fabric public APIs' enabled under Admin Portal › Tenant settings › Developer settings
Mail & Deploy release: Power BI datasources require release 3.6 or higher
Requirements: Current hardware, software and network requirements are maintained in the documentation. View requirements.

PDF • FACTSHEET

Mail & Deploy for Power BI

Product Factsheet

Updated September 2026

Explore the key features, benefits and capabilities of Mail & Deploy for Power BI. Learn how to automate reporting, distribute information and empower users with self-service reporting.

PDFDownload PDFPDF • 1.1 MB

Frequently asked questions

Set this up against your own semantic model

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