Power BI on a Digital Signage Screen: a Full Setup Guide for Office Displays

Power BI is the most widely used business intelligence tool in the world. Most Finnish offices, manufacturing plants, and construction sites already use it — but reports stay buried in a laptop tab or a weekly meeting slide deck. Moved to a digital screen, the same Power BI report reaches the whole team automatically, in real time, without a meeting.

InfoBox's Power BI integration works with a single copied URL. No API keys, no coding, no IT department needed. This guide covers the full process from Power BI settings to a live display.

How Power BI integration works in InfoBox

InfoBox supports published Power BI reports through URL embedding. When you publish a report to Power BI Service and copy its embed URL, you can paste it directly into InfoBox Platform as a website slide. The screen fetches the report directly from Microsoft's servers and updates automatically whenever the underlying data changes.

The integration requires no add-ons and no third-party connectors. It works on the same principle as displaying any website — Power BI just happens to be that website. This means the report your screen shows is always the same version your analyst maintains in Power BI Service.

What you need before you start

Verify these prerequisites before setting up:

• Power BI Pro or Premium license — public sharing requires a Pro or Premium Per User license. Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Power BI Pro automatically.
• A published report in Power BI Service — a Desktop file is not enough; the report must be published to the cloud at app.powerbi.com.
• An InfoBox Platform account — one license from €7/screen/month.
• An Android TV or InfoBox Basic device — most modern Android TVs work directly. For older displays or monitors, the 59 € InfoBox Basic device plugs into any HDMI port.

Step 1 — Publish your report to Power BI Service

Open Power BI Desktop and select Home → Publish → Power BI Service. Choose the workspace where you want to save the report. Publishing typically takes under a minute.

Once published, open the report in your browser at app.powerbi.com. Verify that the report updates as expected and all visuals load without errors. This is also a good moment to check the data source refresh schedule — Power BI can refresh data automatically every 15 minutes or more frequently depending on your settings.

Step 2 — Copy the embed URL

With the report open in Power BI Service, select File → Embed report → Website or portal. Power BI displays an embed code and a direct link. Copy the link field (not the iframe code) — it looks like this:

https://app.powerbi.com/reportEmbed?reportId=xxx&autoAuth=true&ctid=yyy

Note the autoAuth=true parameter in the URL — it enables sign-in without a separate login step, provided the correct permissions have been granted to the report. If your report is shared internally, make sure that the Microsoft account or service account used by the screen has been added as a viewer on the report.

Step 3 — Add a Power BI slide in InfoBox Platform

Sign in to InfoBox Platform and open the playlist you want to edit. Select Add slide → Website and paste your copied Power BI URL into the address field. Save the slide.

Set the slide display duration based on how long you want the report visible before the playlist advances to the next slide. For a single KPI dashboard, 30–60 seconds is a good starting point. If you are showing a Power BI report with multiple tabs, consider a longer duration or separate slides per tab.

Step 4 — Test and publish

Preview the playlist in Platform before publishing. The Power BI report should load within a few seconds and show up-to-date data. If you see a Power BI sign-in page instead of your report, check:

• Does the embed URL include the autoAuth=true parameter?
• Is the report sharing setting set to "Public" or has the screen account been added as a viewer?
• Has your organization's Power BI admin settings allowed embedding to external sites?

When the preview works, publish the playlist to your screen. The display typically updates within a few minutes.

Which Power BI reports work best on a digital screen?

The best reports for digital displays are visually clear, use large text, and are readable in a 10-second glance. Here are the most common use cases by industry:

Sales and customer service

• Monthly sales vs. target — gauge or bar chart
• Open support tickets and average resolution time
• Top-selling products or services of the day
• Individual sales team results at the weekly level

Production and logistics

• Production line utilisation in real time
• Daily capacity vs. plan
• Quality control rejection rate
• Delivery schedule adherence

Office and administration

• Project timelines and milestones
• Budget vs. actuals by department
• HR metrics such as absence rate or open positions
• Customer satisfaction scores (NPS or CSAT)

Tips for optimising Power BI reports for a display screen

A standard Power BI report is designed for a desktop monitor and interactive use. For a digital display, a few adjustments make a significant difference:

• Use a larger font size — Power BI's default font size is often too small for a three-metre reading distance. Fix this in the report's formatting settings or create a dedicated "TV view."
• Hide the navigation pane — add the URL parameter &navContentPaneEnabled=false to the end of the embed URL to hide Power BI's left sidebar.
• Use "Fit to page" view — add &pageFitType=Fit as a URL parameter so the report scales automatically to the screen size.
• Limit the number of visuals — a single display slide should show no more than 3–4 visuals. If your report has more, create separate pages for different metric groups and add them as individual slides in the playlist.

Schedule your Power BI report for the right time

InfoBox's scheduling feature lets you show the Power BI report only when it is relevant. For example:

• Show the sales report on weekdays from 8am to 6pm — blend into other content on weekends
• Show the production report only during the day shift, not during night shift breaks
• Show the weekly report on Monday mornings from 8am to 10am as the team arrives

Scheduling is set at the slide level in Platform — so you can mix Power BI slides with other content, such as HR announcements or lunch menus, in the same playlist.

Power BI alongside other integrations

Power BI works in InfoBox in the same playlist as other content types. A typical office display might cycle through a Power BI dashboard, a SharePoint intranet page, HR announcements from Canva, and a staff introduction from Google Drive — all on the same screen, automatically scheduled.

If you already use InfoBox in your office and want to add Power BI to an existing playlist, the process takes under five minutes.