We are very pleased to announce the availability of the Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics App as a template app.

This app will continue to support you in monitoring the health of premium capacities and making sound decisions about the best use of them and when to scale them so that your users get the best possible experience. As a template app, you will have the ability to connect to the underlying dataset, as well as customize of the report as per your needs. You can then distribute it as an app to colleagues in your organization.

 Install the app

Let’s get started by installing the template app.

As an administrator, the app can be installed by searching for “Power BI Premium Capacity Monitoring” in the Power BI AppSource or by clicking here to get it now

Click  get it now  to install the application into the workspace of your choice.

Once the app has installed, you will see it on your Apps page.

 Connect to data sources and schedule refresh

Select the icon on your Apps page to open the app. On the splash screen, select  Explore. The app opens, showing sample data.

Select the option to  Connect your data  link on the banner at the top of the page.

In the dialog box that appears, set the UTC offset, that is, the difference in hours between Coordinated Universal Time and the time in your location. Then click Next.

In the next dialog that appears, you don’t have to do anything. Just select Sign in.

After you’ve signed in, the report connects to the data sources and is populated with up-to-date data.

Click on the app to open it. Once open you will see a dashboard which shows an aggregated summary of all the capacities that you are an admin of.

 Schedule report refresh

When the data refresh has completed, set up a refresh schedule to keep the report data up to date.

In the top header bar, select  Power BI.

In the left navigation pane, look for the Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics workspace under Workspaces, and follow the instructions described in the Configure scheduled refresh article.

Connect to the underlying Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics Dataset

With your choice of client tools, use the following URL format to address a workspace as though it were an Analysis Services server name. Please make sure the workspace is in a premium capacity.

powerbi://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/[your workspace name]

myorg can be replaced with your tenant name (e.g. “mycompany.com”).

[your workspace name] is case sensitive and can include spaces.

You can easily copy the workspace URL from the workspace settings dialog.

When using the URL, depending on the tool (for example SQL Profiler), you may need to specify Initial Catalog. How to specify it is shown in the following example using SSMS.

 Looking for sovereign cloud support 

Template apps are not available in sovereign clouds. If you are an admin and have a premium capacity located in sovereign cloud, please reach out to us here for support.

 Additional steps to use the Premium Capacity Monitoring app with Power BI Embedded

This same app can be used to monitor any A SKU capacities you may have in Power BI Embedded. They will appear in the report provided you’re an admin of the capacity. Refresh of the report can fail unless you grant certain permissions to Power BI on your A SKUs. This can be done by opening your capacity in the Azure portal, clicking on Access control (IAM) and adding the “Power BI Premium” app to the Reader role. If you’re unable to find the app by name, you can also add it by its client Id: cb4dc29f-0bf4-402a-8b30-7511498ed654.

 Moving forward

Now that you have the app installed, you can see metrics about all the capacities in your organization for which you are an admin. You can now make more informed decisions and more effectively manage the premium capacities, workspaces and datasets in your organization. And be sure to submit your ideas for more any suggestions.

For information about the contents of report and how to use it, see Monitor Premium capacities with the app and How to install the Power BI Premium Capacity template app