Progress Monitoring & Power BI

Cintoo Power BI integration is an experimental feature allowing Cintoo users to display an embedded Power BI report within Cintoo 3D View and providing communication between Cintoo web application and the embedded report. 

This article describes the Progress Monitoring & Microsoft Power BI integration allowing to visualize progress data in a from of interactive dashboard connected to 3D view.

See Power BI embedded analytics overview - Power BI | Microsoft Learn for general documentation about embedded Power BI reports. 

The integration relies on the Progress Monitoring feature in Cintoo so a special permission Manage progress monitoring report is required.


Note: as it is currently designed, this integration requires Cintoo users to have a valid Power BI license and the permission to view the report in Power BI.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prerequisite Entra ID Configuration

The integration requires an app registration in Microsoft Entra ID tenant, as described here: Get started with Power BI Embedded - Power BI | Microsoft Learn. 

Follow the instructions for Embed for your organization scenario. 

At the end of the process, a new App Registration should appear in the Entra tenant. 


From Overview section of App Registration, copy Client ID and Tenant ID, which would later be needed in Cintoo.


In Authentication section, add a new platform configuration of type Single-page application. 

 

and in Redirect URIs, put https://aec.cintoo.com, or the name of Cintoo custom domain if the company has one (https://your-organization.cintoo.cloud).


Depending on Entra security configuration, Entra administrator may need to grant admin consent for the organization, in API permissions section.

Power BI Service > Report.Real.All permission is mandatory for the integration.

Prerequisite Power BI Configuration

Create a Power BI model containing a table named CintooModelElements with a column named ModelElementID, which corresponds to the first column of the CIPM report. It allows the report to connect the problematic parts of the model according to the CIPM report with 3D information in Cintoo.

This is a mandatory condition for the report to be interactive!


Create a report based on this model, and publish it on the Power BI service.

 

Note the Report ID, which could be found here in the report URL.

Report Embedding in Cintoo

Power BI icon is in the low right corner of the viewer, click to open a settings dialog. 

Enter Tenant ID, Client ID and Report ID collected in previous steps (Entra ID and Power BI configurations), and click login.



If App Registration is configured correctly, login popup will appear, and the report should appear after successful authentication.


Report Usage Example


In the presented report 3 following columns come directly from CIPM report:

  • ModelElementID (mandatory)
  • Model Element Name
  • Coverage (%)

The rest is taken from external sources:

  • Category
  • Level

These are used as filters to narrow down the list of model elements.

Any other data like party responsible, stage of the project or any other could be used to enrich the data.


Note: switch to 3D Navigation mode in 3D View before using the interactive localization with Power BI report.


Highlighting an item in the report list on the right (by clicking on it once) triggers a Focus action in 3D view to move the camera to the highlighted model element. 


Note: when highlighting multiple items in the report list Cintoo will only focus on the first one.


If the corresponding model is pre-selected in Model Explorer the corresponding model element would be highlighted in Model Content Explorer every time it's clicked in Power BI report. 

It's also possible to search the needed element in Model Content Explorer by copying it's name from the Power BI dashboard then adding a prefix "label:" and putting the name of the file searched in brackets "example":


Use Progress Monitoring results in collaboration with Power BI reporting to visualize the data that needs to be reviewed inside Cintoo project. Add layers of information to filter the data in a more convenient and smart way.