Power BI on Digital Signage Screens: Live Reports Without Public Links

To show a Power BI report on a digital signage screen, use the InfoBox Power BI add-on. It puts your organization's own reports live on screens, without public Publish to web links, and the report data refreshes on screen every 15 minutes. The add-on is free. It requires the reports' workspace to be on Fabric, Premium or Embedded capacity.

We first wrote this guide in July 2026. Back then the only option was to publish the report to the web and add its address to the screen as a website, which worked but made the report public to anyone with the link. Since October 2026 InfoBox has its own Power BI add-on, and this guide now covers it: what it needs, how to set it up and which Power BI dashboards work on a wall screen.

What changed: the add-on replaces public links

Power BI's Publish to web makes a report public. Anyone with the link can open it without signing in, and the link can end up in search engines. Many security policies forbid it outright, and a Power BI admin can switch the feature off for the whole tenant.

The add-on works differently. InfoBox sees only the workspaces your IT team shares with it, and each screen embeds the report with a short-lived view token. The report is never public, and the screen never holds a Microsoft credential.

What does the Power BI add-on need?

Check these five things before you start:

• Capacity: the workspace with the reports must be on Microsoft Fabric (F), Power BI Premium (P) or Power BI Embedded (A or EM) capacity.
• A Microsoft Entra admin: connecting needs a Global, Application, Cloud Application, Privileged Role or Fabric Administrator.
• A Power BI admin: to switch on two tenant settings.
• Screens online: the report loads from Power BI straight onto the screen, so screens need HTTPS access to app.powerbi.com.
• No row-level security: the add-on does not support reports that use row-level security (RLS) yet.

The Entra admin and the Power BI admin are often the same person, in which case setup takes one sitting.

Is a Power BI Pro license enough?

No. This is the most common question, and the reason is Microsoft's licensing, not InfoBox. Power BI Pro and Premium Per User are per-user licenses: they let a signed-in person open a report in a browser. A signage screen is not a signed-in user, so the report is embedded in an app, and Microsoft only allows that on capacity.

To check, open the workspace settings in Power BI. Under License info you will see Fabric capacity, Premium capacity or Embedded. If it says Pro, the workspace isn't ready for the add-on yet. Many organizations already run Fabric for other work, and then all you need to do is move the screen reports into a workspace on that capacity. Microsoft bills the capacity, and the screens use the capacity your organization already has. InfoBox charges nothing for Power BI.

How to set up the Power BI add-on

Setup happens once per organization. After that, anyone who manages content can add reports to screens without involving IT.

Step 1: Connect your Microsoft account in InfoBox

In the InfoBox control panel, open Add-ons, find Power BI and click Connect. Sign in with your organization's Microsoft account and approve the InfoBox Signage app. The person signing in needs one of the Entra admin roles listed above; a role granted through Privileged Identity Management (PIM) must be active at sign-in. Back in InfoBox, the Add-ons page shows a checklist of which steps are done.

Step 2: Turn on two Power BI tenant settings

A Power BI admin opens Settings, Admin portal, Tenant settings and Developer settings at app.powerbi.com and enables Service principals can call Fabric public APIs and Embed content in apps. We recommend limiting both to a security group that contains InfoBox Signage rather than the whole organization. Changes can take about 15 minutes to take effect.

Step 3: Share a workspace with InfoBox

For each workspace whose reports should go on screens, a workspace admin opens Manage access and adds InfoBox Signage with the Member role. InfoBox sees only the workspaces it has been added to and nothing else in your Power BI.

Step 4: Add a report to a screen

Once the checklist says Ready, open a screen or playlist and choose Add new, Integrations, Power BI. Pick the report and, if you like, one of its pages. The form previews the report in the screen's own shape, so you see how it fits before adding it. The default display time is 30 seconds, and you can change it like any other slide.

The full walkthrough and troubleshooting are in the Power BI article in our help center, which you can send straight to your IT team.

How often does the report refresh on screen?

The report appears live, exactly as designed in Power BI, and the screen fetches fresh report data every 15 minutes. The data refreshes without reloading the page, so the screen never flashes blank.

Two refreshes are easy to mix up: the screen's and the semantic model's. The screen always shows what is in Power BI. If the semantic model refreshes once a night, the screen shows the same number all day, even though it checks four times an hour. For a faster-moving dashboard, change the refresh schedule in Power BI.

A network outage doesn't blank the screen. We tested the add-on on an office screen whose Wi-Fi dropped for almost two hours: the report stayed on screen the whole time, and refreshes resumed within a minute of the connection coming back. If a screen restarts with no network, though, it can't show the report until the connection returns. Image and video slides keep playing offline.

Security in brief, for your IT team

• One app identity: InfoBox stores no passwords, secrets or user tokens. The InfoBox Signage app needs no Microsoft Graph or other API permissions.
• No editing: access is limited to the workspaces you add InfoBox Signage to. InfoBox never edits, publishes or shares reports.
• Short-lived tokens: each screen gets a view-only embed token for one report, valid for about an hour.
• Revocable at any time: remove InfoBox Signage from a workspace, turn off the tenant settings or delete the app in Entra. Access is recorded in Entra sign-in logs and the Microsoft Purview audit log.

Which Power BI dashboards work on a digital signage screen?

A good screen report can be read from three meters away in a few seconds. Keep each page to three or four visuals at most. Typical uses:

• Sales and customer service: month-to-date sales against target, open tickets and average resolution time.
• Production and logistics: today's output against plan, quality deviations and delivery performance.
• Office and management: project timelines, budget tracking and customer satisfaction.

A report built for a desktop usually looks cramped on a screen. Use larger fonts and simple high-contrast visuals such as bar charts, line charts and big numbers. Remove filters and slicers from the page meant for the screen. Split a multi-page report so each page is its own slide in the playlist.

Portrait screens: a Power BI page has a fixed shape set when the report is built. A landscape page shows as a thin strip on a portrait screen, with empty space above and below. Add a portrait page in Power BI Desktop (Format page, Canvas settings, Custom 1080 × 1920) and pick it for the portrait screen. One report can hold both landscape and portrait pages.

A Power BI slide behaves like any other slide in a playlist, so you can schedule it for weekdays from 8:00 to 17:00 and alternate it with announcements, the lunch menu or Canva content. For more ideas, see our guide to office digital signage.

What if our reports are not on capacity?

Then the old way still works. Publish the report with Publish to web, copy the embed URL and add it to the screen as a Website slide in the Web category. Remember that the report becomes public on the internet, so use this only for data that can safely be public.

What does the Power BI add-on cost?

The add-on is free in InfoBox, and you switch it on yourself on the Add-ons page. InfoBox software costs €9 per screen per month for fewer than ten screens and €7 per screen per month from ten screens, billed annually. For one screen that's €108 a year. Power BI capacity is your organization's own Microsoft purchase, and InfoBox neither pays for nor bills it. Any Android TV works as the screen, or any TV with the €59 InfoBox Basic device in its HDMI port. See pricing for details.