What is Power BI Writeback?
Power BI has revolutionized how businesses visualize and analyze their data. But what if you could take this a step further and not only visualize but also update and manage your data directly within Power BI? This is where Power BI writeback comes into play. Writeback capabilities allow users to send data back to the database directly from the Power BI interface, enabling more interactive and dynamic data management.
The challenge is that Power BI has no built-in functionality or native capabilities for writeback! But wait – it can anyhow be achieved using Aimplan.
Discover the Full Potential of Power BI Writeback
If you're using Power BI for your reporting and analysis needs, understanding the power of writeback functionality can significantly enhance your data management capabilities. By the end of this post, you will learn the various use cases of Power BI writeback, the benefits it offers, the challenges you might face, and how Aimplan can simplify the process with its specialized tools.
Different Use-Cases of Power BI Writeback
Imagine a Power BI report or app where the user can not only view and analyze data but also edit data and specific measures. This kind of solution can be used for many different use cases:
Budgeting and Forecasting: One of the primary uses of writeback in Power BI is in financial planning. Users can input budget and forecast figures directly into Power BI, which are then written back to the database. This allows for real-time updates and adjustments, making financial planning more accurate and efficient.
Sales and Demand Planning: Writeback enables sales teams to update their forecasts and sales data directly within Power BI. This ensures that the latest information is always available for analysis, leading to better decision-making and more responsive sales strategies.
Operational Planning: For operational teams, being able to update data such as inventory levels, staffing schedules, and production plans directly within Power BI streamlines workflows and ensures that all stakeholders are working with the most current data.
Data Corrections and Updates: Writeback allows users to correct errors or update records directly within Power BI, reducing the need for manual data entry and ensuring data consistency across the organization. Users can also update the mappings and hierarchies of your data.
Challenges with Power BI Writeback
While the use cases and benefits of Power BI writeback are clear, there are several challenges associated with implementing this functionality:
Power BI lacks writeback functionality: There is no built-in functionality to enable users to edit any data within the Power BI user interface. I.e., it’s impossible to configure the Matrix or Table visual, or any other Power BI visual to enable users to edit and update data.
Embedded Power Apps are not good enough: It’s true that it’s possible to embed Power Apps into Power BI pages. However, the user experience and the look and feel of embedded Power Apps into Power BI are clunky. This might be good enough for simple scenarios, but building planning, budgeting, and forecasting applications requires deeper functionality and deeper integration with the Power BI data model.
Complexity: Setting up writeback capabilities requires a good understanding of both Power BI, the data model, and how you want to store the data. Ensuring that data written back to the database is accurate and consistent is crucial. Poorly implemented writeback can lead to data corruption and integrity issues.
Security: Writeback functionality must be carefully controlled to prevent unauthorized changes to the data. Proper security measures and user permissions are essential.
How Aimplan Can Solve Writeback in Power BI
Aimplan offers two main custom visuals in Microsoft AppSource that can simplify and enhance the writeback process in Power BI: the "Aimplan Planning and Reporting" custom visual and the "Aimplan Data Input Table" custom visual.
1. Aimplan Planning and Reporting Custom Visual:
- This tool allows users to input, update, and manage their planning data directly within Power BI. With planning data, we mean numbers. Think of a spreadsheet with products or accounts or any dimension in rows and months or some other dimension in columns. Similar to that. It integrates seamlessly with your existing data models, enabling real-time updates and adjustments.
- The visual is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for users to interact with their data and perform writeback operations without needing advanced technical knowledge.
- The visual stores the data in a central database (Azure SQL), which is accessible and can be used in any Power BI report or other application
The Aimplan Planning and Reporting visual implements advanced functionality for allocations or splashing, full audit trails, scenario management, and suggestions.
2. Aimplan Data Input Table Custom Visual:
- This visual provides a structured interface for data input, allowing users to add and update records directly within Power BI. Think of a database editing table embedded live inside of Power BI.
It supports various data type controls, such as text, numbers, date pickers, checkboxes, etc., ensuring that the data written back into the database is accurate and consistent.
- The Aimplan Data Input Table is highly customizable, allowing organizations to tailor it to their specific needs and workflows.
3. Other Aimplan Custom Visuals used for writeback:
Aimplan also offers two other custom visuals using writeback technology, but from a user perspective, ‘writeback’ is less obvious.
- The Aimplan Commenting Visual makes it possible to add and edit comments visible in Power BI reports. I.e., managers and other users with such rights can provide context to the numbers and charts visible on the report page by adding comments. And the comments are linked to the current selected slicer values. For example, if a user writes a comment associated with the result of a specific cost center in the Q2 forecast, the comment will be attached to these dimension members.
The Aimplan Status Visual enables Power BI users to control the status of different planning and reporting processes, which are also associated with the data visible on screen. The use case is mainly to coordinate approval processes, where users at different levels can approve planning or actual numbers.
Transform Your Data Management with Power BI Writeback
Implementing writeback capabilities in Power BI can transform how your organization manages and interacts with its data. Despite the challenges, tools like Aimplan make it possible to leverage writeback functionality within Power BI, enhancing your financial planning, operational efficiency, and data accuracy.
Ready to take your Power BI experience to the next level? Explore how Aimplan can help you unlock the full potential of Power BI writeback today!