How Do You Schedule Power BI Reports by Email?

Imagine sitting down to start your day and finding a familiar message: “Could you send our sales figures over?” Your distributor has calls to make this morning. They need yesterday’s totals and the order detail, and they cannot start until your email arrives.

You open Power BI, choose their account, check the date and export the report. Then you find the spreadsheet they also need, attach both files and write a short message explaining what is included. None of it is particularly difficult. It just needs doing again tomorrow, and the next day, even when you are busy or away.

PBRS lets you save those decisions as a reporting job. You choose the report, the distributor’s view, the files they should receive and the email you want to send. PBRS then prepares and delivers them at the time you have arranged.

The distributor receives a PDF they can read and keep, with an Excel file when they need to work through the detail. They do not need a Power BI license to open those exported files. Your team keeps the Power BI access needed to produce them, while the distributor gets on with the morning’s calls.

You may already have enough in Power BI for a simple report email. Open the report, choose Subscribe and create a subscription. You can choose who receives it, when it runs and the message that goes with it. For a colleague who wants a quick look at the figures and a link back to the report, that may cover the whole request.

Our distributor is asking for something more. They want their own sales figures in files they can use, with the order detail alongside the summary. Later, they may ask you to include the stock report or copy their account manager. Those are good reasons to look beyond the basic email subscription.

With PBRS, you can prepare several reports for the same email, combine PDFs into one document or put Excel outputs into a single workbook. You can also save a copy to a folder or SharePoint as part of the same job. Your distributor receives the pack, and your account team can find the retained copy without asking you to forward it.

You do not have to buy Power BI capacity simply to add these delivery arrangements. PBRS provides an alternative export route for applicable Pro and PPU reports, so you can build the routine without a Power Automate flow or a custom script. Try the actual report and files during evaluation to confirm that the chosen export method gives you the result you need.

Begin with the sales report and your own test mailbox. You want to see what the distributor will receive before making it part of their morning routine.

Create a PBRS Single Report Schedule and select the Power BI account, workspace and sales report. Choose the distributor’s filters and the pages they need, then preview the result. Give the job a name your colleague will recognize if they need to find it while you are away.

Next, add an Email destination and choose the PDF output. Put the distributor in To and add the account manager to CC if they should receive the same copy. Use Inserts to put the reporting date in the subject and filename, so tomorrow’s email does not arrive looking like a resend of today’s.

The PBRS schedule guide walks through the report settings, and the Email destination guide explains the message and attachment controls.

Write the message you would send yourself

There is no reason for an automated email to sound impersonal. Keep the greeting and explanation you would normally write: “Good morning. Your sales report is attached, along with the order detail for today’s calls.” PBRS lets you format the message in HTML, include your logo and links, and use Inserts for values that change each day.

Send through the SMTP or Office 365 account your team has configured in PBRS. That lets you build the delivery around your reporting mailbox rather than manually forwarding a notification. Check the sending account with whoever looks after your email, including which addresses it is allowed to send from.

Put the supporting detail in the same delivery

The distributor may read the PDF first, then open Excel to work out which orders need attention. PBRS can schedule data-only Excel exports for that purpose. You can arrange the workbook around the information they use, with worksheet names, formatting and a template where needed.

When sales, stock and outstanding orders belong together, create a package. PBRS can attach the reports to one email or merge their PDF outputs into a single document. Excel outputs can become one workbook instead of a collection of separate files. The distributor gets a pack they can work through, and your team no longer has to assemble it every morning.

You can protect the PDF or workbook with a password and use an encrypted ZIP when the files need to travel together. If different distributors need different passwords, PBRS can take those values from the delivery data. Agree how each distributor will receive their password before starting the routine.

When another distributor asks for the same service

A few weeks later, another customer asks for their figures too. Then a third wants Excel instead of PDF. You should not have to maintain a growing set of almost identical jobs just to keep up.

A PBRS data-driven schedule reads the delivery instructions from your database or JSON data. Each record tells it which customer’s figures to prepare, who should receive them and how they should be delivered. The same data can supply To, CC and BCC addresses, the greeting, filename, worksheet names and password. It can also determine the output format and destination.

For example, one distributor can receive a PDF by email while another gets a workbook and a copy in their agreed folder. When a contact changes, update the delivery record. PBRS uses the new information on the next run. The data-driven schedule guide explains how to connect those values to the job.

Try the morning your distributor will experience

Choose a time after the sales figures are ready, and include a Power BI refresh in the job if it needs one. Run the first delivery to your test mailbox. Open the PDF, check the customer and date, and find an order you recognize. Then open the workbook and make sure it contains the detail the distributor will use.

Try a day with no sales and a failed run too. Decide whether a blank report should be sent, withheld or followed by another action, and who should hear when something goes wrong. PBRS provides empty-report actions and exception handling, including retries. Once those cases behave as intended, switch to the distributor’s address and enable the routine.

Your sales application may already know when the overnight orders have finished loading. It can ask PBRS to run the saved delivery at that point, instead of relying on a fixed time that might be too early on a busy morning.

Your reporting team keeps the report, attachments and email settings in PBRS. The application supplies the request to start. That gives you one place to maintain the distributor’s delivery as their needs change.

POST /api/Schedule/ExecuteScheduleAsync
Content-Type: application/json

{"ScheduleType":"report","uniqueid":101,"RunBy":"API"}

GET /api/Schedule/GetExecutionStatus?ExecutionId={ExecutionId}

Return to that morning message. This time, the distributor already has the sales PDF and order detail. The files carry the right date, the email explains what is included, and the account manager has their copy. You can start your own work without first preparing someone else’s reports.

Start with one email you currently assemble by hand. If a native subscription gives the reader everything they need, keep it simple. If you are still exporting, combining, renaming or forwarding files, use that delivery to evaluate PBRS.

The Power BI report automation page explains what else you can include as the routine grows. To see how your own morning email could work, explore PBRS report email delivery.
Plan your Power BI report emails