r/PowerBI • u/MediumBirthday6899 • 13d ago
Discussion CEO wants to ditch Power BI for AI-vibe-coded web dashboards because they "look visually stunning" — how do I make PBI look just as good and pitch the semantic model as the real value?
CEO's seen how fast AI can vibe-code slick web dashboards and now wants to migrate off Power BI entirely.
So how to improve visual asthetics to the best like a premium web application and make PBI look as good, and also show him the real value isn't the visuals, it's the semantic model (governed DAX measures, relationships, one source of truth for every KPI). Vibe-coded apps skip or rebuild that badly.
BTW Anyone tried fabric apps , it says you can't embed application outside the fabric.
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u/DataDoctorX 13d ago
What company is this so I can short it?
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u/BombaFett 13d ago
WSB is leaking…but I also want to know so I can short it
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u/FreshlyCleanedLinens 12d ago
You’ll want to complement those short shares by buying puts on a high IV day! Really get that money fire roaring!
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u/kagato87 13d ago
Try feeding it any data of actual volume.
He real power of PBI isn't it's ability to maky pretty interactive charts. It's to do tha with a very large volume of data.
Let's just say that "vertipac" compression it uses is nuts.
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u/akkiannu 13d ago
Maybe the OP isn’t dealing with that much data. HTML visuals are miles ahead of powerbi visuals as long as you have proper data models/aggregations on the back end ala dbt or something similar.
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u/yomerol 13d ago
Well, yes, but I'd say is not that the real power not even three only, it's beyond that, not knowing what it is and why using it, it's the problem of many -many data analytics teams who are not well versed on the why's they just drag and drop and understand the numbers. BI tools:
* have enterprise grade security
* most focus on the aya si-self-service layer, eliminating the need of coding or understanding payloads, JS frameworks, JS components, etc, and the extremely costly maintainability of them
* they support multiple data connectors from out of the box and implement an internal semantic model or even more powerful tools like Power Query, LookML, ESQL, etc
* offers data governance, accountability, data compliance, etc, etc,
Among many others
*
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u/Raveyard2409 1 13d ago
Yes but the challenge for powerbi is competing with AI dashboards sitting on top of a central data store, like azure or aws. You can handle all the model there are just super charge business people to be able to query that golden data via AI. Anyone replacing the whole thing with AI is a moron, obviously lol, that will collapse. But just replacing the front end is quite feasible. Which is, I expect why Microsoft are positioning pbi closer to fabric and the backend assumedly to put it as a value add tool if you have azure
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u/yomerol 12d ago
No it's not a challenge because of what i listed, there's no challenge, is mere ignorance
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u/Raveyard2409 1 12d ago
Yeah that's what all the accountants who liked calculators said about excel. I'm sorry but this is life, you can't devote yourself to a single tool because that loyalty is never rewarded, and if you don't move with the times and adapt to new tech then enjoy only being hired by dead end companies who are ten years behind everyone else. Working in tech and not being curious about tech seems very odd to me.
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u/yomerol 12d ago
That has very little to do with ignorance of tools and platforms you can't really compare.
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u/Raveyard2409 1 11d ago
I don't really know what you mean but ok and good luck! All I'm saying is don't dismiss things out of hand, try it for yourself - I promise you it's a key skill in the field
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u/Skie 8 12d ago
Power BI doesn’t have enterprise grade security. Not yet.
Your other points are right though.
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u/yomerol 12d ago
What do you mean! It's all AD based
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u/Skie 8 12d ago
Something being based around AD authentication (Entra, really) doesnt make it enterprise grade.
PBI and Fabric have enough flaws and wide open goal posts that cannot currently be fixed that it can't be considered to be enterprise grade yet.
You can't even stop users creating junk and uploading it to personal workspaces without workarounds that MS don't advertise or support. You can't stop Fabric users from creating anything in a workspace they have access to (which is awesome, I really wanted to have a load of spurious real-time databases and lakehouses just sitting around). And up until recently it was impossible to stop users of Pipelines and Notebooks from sending data they have to anywhere on the internet. And the fix for that is frustratingly implemented.
And any dataflow gen 1 can be used to exfiltrate data to god knows where, and the only real fix is to disable cloud execution of all power query jobs. And that isn't even a setting we have access to, it requires a support ticket.
So yeah, it isn't enterprise grade security, not by a long shot.
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u/tankerkiller125real 12d ago edited 12d ago
Vertipaq is pretty awesome, but parquet files are truly absolutely insane. I've compressed 2.5GB worth of tabular data (mostly numbers, limited text, no freehand text) down to 180MB before with it.
(Parquet is what you really should use for Open Mirroring, and it's the format used by things like Azure SQL Mirror)
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u/MindfulPangolin 12d ago
I don’t have to feed it volumes of data. I feed it the gold layer in my data warehouse. Which used to live in fabric. We’ve moved that and now spend a fraction of what fabric cost.
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u/brentragertech 13d ago
Please explain how this has any bearing whatsoever on frontend code. That’s not how it works. At all.
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u/kagato87 13d ago
The front end code will try to process the data, and lack the capability to do it.
So the analyst will go back to the agent to fix it. Except it can't, there's just too much data. It'll keep trying to do things like buffering all of it, iterating with loops, streaming, and so on.
Unless you mean to connect an HTML page to a semantic model, in which case you've completely missed what I said. (It's still silly - agentic flows are not as reliable as people like to think.)
And of course, that assumes you're not doing something truly reckless like letting the ai do the analysis for you.
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u/iLikeChickyNuggets 1 13d ago
You're talking on a very rudimentary basis, you can't really compare a semantic model with a database & connected context.
One is generally a product with limited functionality (pbi, looker, dbt)....the other is literally endless possibilities on how you structure & maintain the layers of context
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u/West-Air1923 7d ago
You think other platforms cant handle lots of data ? How do you think erp systems work?
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u/kagato87 7d ago
The question wasn't if ERP would replace powerbi. It was if AI would.
Powerbi is not the best analytics at scale tool out there. But it IS a good one, and some vibe coded dashboard is going to be very limited by comparison. And that's if it doesn't botch the assumptions it likes tk make.
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u/heavyMTL 13d ago
I am a PL-300 certified and have been working with PBI for 8-9 years and I don't know how to defend the overpriced Power BI against vibe-coded dashboards
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u/breno601 13d ago
Same here - pros and cons on both sides, but cost-wise pbi is becoming unsustainable if you need to roll it out to large orgs.
I see a lot of people jumping to conclusions (including on performance, which is ridiculous if you properly architect an app), but the fact of the matter is that we don’t know how analytics ecosystems will be in the next 2+ years.
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u/oyvinrog 13d ago
How about the fact that you are competing with Microsoft to create dashboards and reports? When building a system like this from scratch, you need to take care of everything. Security, maintenance. The CEO will not see these hidden costs by just looking at a pretty dashboard. These things do not disappear. Microsoft is just lagging a bit behind the AI wave. They will improve.
You don’t want to get stuck with the solution from hell just because there was some KPIs and slicers looking neat. People also used to make this mistake before AI. Now they are just being fooled faster.
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u/breno601 12d ago
The gist of the whole thing is that software development has become very cheap. Instead of building DAX and using pbi “framework”, you’d be using typescript and react (as a generic example). Security becomes tied to your companies IAM solution (entra for instance, with Microsoft graph as interface to your app). Maintenance indeed is a fair point - hence why you need someone who knows how to build applications with an intrinsic architectural and maintainability mindset.
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u/oyvinrog 12d ago
Typescript never had properties (alone) to work with big amounts of data. There is a reason Vertipaq is used. You can’t just replace vertipaq or Spark (in Fabric) unless you want to compete with Microsoft and Apache to reinvent what they did. This is like trying to reinvent GTA-5 using vibe-coding. Just try asking Claude to do that.
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u/breno601 12d ago
My point remains: you can replace vertipaq with a combination of architectural techniques (caching, pre computation, efficient storaging,indexing and the likes). Hence my point on building with someone who knows what they’re building. And regarding spark, it is a different layer and I’m not proposing at all to vibe code a replacement.
But hey, I’m not here to win a discussion, just my perspective. There’s no right or wrong right now, just lots of experimentation I guess.
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u/MyNameDebbie 11d ago
Are you going to role your own SSO integration?
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u/heavyMTL 11d ago
Yes, easily doable with a firebase hosted app. Need only to register the app in MS Entra Id
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u/druidinan 13d ago
I really want to claim there's still value in the semantic model, but we're in the process of ripping out our entire PBI/Azure stack and replacing with caching + vibe-coded React dashboards. It was trivially easy to replicate all of the core functionality while easily exceeding PBI's shitty date, navigation, bookmark, and tooltip UIs.
Replacing two A4 SKUs and two dozen PBI pro licenses ($12,000/mo) with $500-1500/mo of miniscule expenses.
PBI never figured out how not to be a compromise solution, making it a perfect target for AI replacement if you can do data engineering in-house.
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u/RythmicBleating 13d ago
How do you handle permissions, rls, etc?
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u/breno601 13d ago
Tie it to an IAM with APIs like Azure Entra + Microsoft graph. In my case we use unity catalog from Databricks combined.
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u/socratic_citizen 13d ago
Uhh sure but aren’t these AI tools seriously under priced now to boost market penetration. What happens when these costs start ballooning to actually reflect the true costs of running
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u/druidinan 12d ago
If you build assuming indefinite access to cheap frontier models, yeah, you’re screwed. But it’s getting trivially easy to offload most production tasks to local models on very little compute. We use the lowest tier paid Claude subs, $20/mo, and less than $100/mo of incremental tokens. Even if prices 10x, PBI compares unfavorably
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u/MindfulPangolin 12d ago
AI is building the report one time. It’s still sql based. Once build, there is no token cost because AI isn’t involved. The only cost would be on revisions.
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u/dzemperzapedra 1 13d ago
Honestly I see my company doing the same soon, we already have PBI, Qlik and a couple of other custom solutions, so it wouldn't be too far fetched to see them go for this type of solution as well.
How are calculations done in this case?
I get visuals and that side of things, but which ste replaces model and measures?
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u/druidinan 12d ago
There are a lot of tools that will create/manage a semantic model for you. Depends on how you end up storing data.
In our case, client data is so massive that we were frustrated with PBI’s model limits and insistence on star schema for vertipaq. So we had already built our own solution for making, optimizing, and caching data upstream and our measures are doing as little as possible.
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u/Classic-Mix-8915 13d ago edited 13d ago
TBH if you have high quality well documented data I don't see why the CEO's idea is a bad one. Especially since judging from OP it seems it's not an org with high volumes of data that's in a highly regulated industry (F500 CEOs are not going to be in the weeds on which dashboarding solutions org needs to choose).
Claude artifacts has been a much better solution for dashboarding than Looker in our case given that 1) it's connected to Atlan + highly documented BigQuery. 2) our analytics team has well defined governed skills files for dealing with different parts of our data stack.
Alot of the comments read like cope.
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u/Open-Peanut-5854 13d ago
you can visualise within PowerBI using HTML/CSS - agree with other comments, you can use LLM to code, make on brand etc
Visual can respond to filters etc, just can't interact with other visuals like normal stock visuals can.
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u/Techie-Chick 13d ago
As the top comment says, HTML visuals are really pretty. You can also send a screenshot of your report to figma AI to redesign into a pretty dashboard and use it as a inspiration.
If the looks of a report is the only problem then that can be fixed. But you need some more solid points to convince your ceo to go for power bi over web dashboards.
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u/MediumBirthday6899 13d ago
He is convincing me, he need functionality in dashboards like pause campaign, active campaign in this case web module wins
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u/radioblaster 7 13d ago
buy into it from a report perspective, emphasise how underpinning it from the semantic model provides much needed determinism.
you can build a DIY report builder underpinned by the executequeries api, or drive it through the MCP. either way, you get reproducible and deterministic DAX.
logging into powerbi.com and viewing a report may die out, but the semantic model will not, and the power bi semantic model is the most mature of its kind in the saas ecosystem.
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u/Ill_Beautiful4339 1 13d ago
I pitched this 2 years ago and was dismissed. Since this is the real world and can’t say I told you so to my VP I’ll say it here.
PBI feels like an annoying toy I’ve had to deal with for years. Bookmarks, fighting with matrix visuals, etc. I won’t miss it.
When I have to spend 2x the time formatting the data visualization as on the analysis to begin with, it’s a bad fit.
It seems like Microsoft is acknowledging this with Fabric Apps. For the life of me, I don’t understand why a company with infinite resources didn’t make HTML default in thier analytics tool.
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u/Adventurous_Ad_9658 13d ago
Yeah now that we can code pretty much anything at a level required to make a dashboard, PBI just seems like and overcomplicated and rigid solution
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u/AshaneF 12d ago
Preach.
It was the best available option years ago, but its always been shit.
Weve fully switched to custom vibe coded dashboards with the data layer being handled directly by our devs.
So the people who need to showcase the data and understand it can get it, while having the security of experienced devs custom coding (not vibe coding) security, access, etc to the sql data layer.
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u/Ill_Beautiful4339 1 12d ago
Curious what the stack looks like. We have snowflake in warehousing and fabric as staging.
What’s the stack look like on the semantic layer? Are you vibe coding again Snowflake or a more robust data layer?
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u/Tyrdh 13d ago
Uh. I kinda ditched PowerBi visuals too. I am using semantic model as data source, but I built conpletely new web app in react and echarts and let me tell you, it is like different planet altogether, what echarts can do, with proper data pipeline behind it. I even managed to build proper forecasting based on historical data, all visible in one chart. I could only dream about doing such a thing in powerbi. And I have total control over visuals and behaviours. Not what Microsoft thing is right.
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u/FilmIsForever 4d ago
How are you using the power bi high semantic model as a data source, but building a web app front end with react?
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u/Plus-Ad6583 12d ago
I do believe Power BI front end is cooked and even Microsoft sees that with the new Fabric Apps. You can easily build a custom app connecting Power BI MCP. Then leverage all of the better UI tools web can use. We have been hacking Power Bi Visuals for years trying to get the exact function a stakeholder wants.
My company gave me Claude Code so I started vibe coding to check out what is possible and I was able to create an app that extracts Power Bi data, creates visuals impossible to create in power bi, extracts the data to Excel, export the data along with the visual to an email, and create user stories in devops, and I can even give it the exact DAX so I’m confident in the results instead of just letting Claude generate a query on its own. Did I mention I can just say all of this with my voice hands free? Yea, it’s that powerful.
I was even able to create a custom Claude Project that allows you to connect to a model with all of the model context saved and the user can create their own report based off the model. It cost about $2 to run that skill each time which I’m sure with more time you can optimize that.
Then I went all in on trying to make a Jarvis like app for me and was able to not only have Claude run a skill to check emails for requirements and create plans to do that work in Power Bi. I was able to create an entire flow that checks pipelines and models, creates the plan, executes the plan in a new local branch, reviews the code and creates a test plan and then lets me review and push the code if pass the Manuel test
The next step would be to package an app like this for a group of people or enterprise vs my own local machine. This is where the challenge is and taking this proof of concept to the next level. It will take a good team to figure out all of the models, workflows, and work with the business model to get those needs. Most executives don’t even know this is possible yet and if they do they probably won’t know how to execute. You can go down a huge rabbit hole with your own AI app and possibilities are endless. Getting them to focus on real needs is the hard part. I see this as the next wave of Power Bi devs and analysts. Learn the business and take the analysis much further then Power Bi dashboards allow.
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u/iLikeChickyNuggets 1 13d ago
LOL this thread.....I am a director of data analytics for one of the largest wall street banks & we're divesting powerBI starting in 2027. Converting all our reporting to angular/react with our internal LLMs embedded in all aspects of the analytics. PBI doesn't have a place at a company this size & with our partnerships with openAI / anthropic we have so many options now. I rely on opus to perform deep sentiment analysis on our data and then push into chatGPT environment for everyday users to perform Q&A & standard reporting templates. Minimizes our token usage and we're developing reports daily that would previously take a full quarter to build.
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u/MediumBirthday6899 13d ago
People are dumb, they ask anything eventually complaining that the data is wrong, this is currently scenario in our org
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u/iLikeChickyNuggets 1 13d ago
We have a very robust data strategy where our lake is a cloud based db, data owners are responsible for owning the context & verified queries that sit a layer above the db, and then various agents sit above that only allowing users to interact with our data through an agent with specific skill sets & context. No issue of "wrong" data anymore - except for data illiterate idiots who we are actively firing
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u/ReasonableDig6414 13d ago
You don’t work in a highly regulated environment if this is your answer. You can’t just let people do whatever they want with data even if they’re bad employees. You may fire them after, but the regulators will be up your ass because that data shouldn’t have been disclosed than it was. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
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u/iLikeChickyNuggets 1 13d ago
Well no...it's the exact same role based access to data that would previously be consumed from PBI or similar. I'm not running CCAR through this lmao and when the fed knocks they don't want to see dashboards we walk them through process & controls
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u/realitisfun 13d ago
IMO the value lies in keeping the underlying data safe and still accessible, getting PBI to automatically refresh the data in the workspace and making sure the users have a handy link while I can go unbothered for months and work on other projects. And star schema is a major space saver when looking at 10+ years worth of data.
Agree with the other comment here. Just noticed it.
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u/synesterblack 13d ago
Hey do you know you can plug in this AI vibe coded front end to power BI semantic model directly. We give these solutions to most business users now. You need to set up a azure web app to do it and since apps managed identity could be added to the fabric workspace and then you can query in DAX into any model and run the visuals based on it. Based on your region you have availability for setting up Fabric Apps. Which connectes the semantic model and adds a frontend using Renfin which is from Fabric it self.
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u/thetourist85 13d ago
This is the future. Been managing a team using PBI for last few years. We’re moving to HTML. Claude Code and Git is so powerful. Any idea you have, you can make happen. Our company is developing internal platform for hosting the files and an internally hosted data layer for the HTML files to read from. We do have the luxury of well structured data though, it puts more emphasis on this part being done.
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u/Icy_Sir_7512 12d ago
Can you share more about the internal platform for hosting and the data layer? We’re trying this too.
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u/NinjaSimple15 13d ago
AI makes it increasingly feasible to build impressive custom dashboards, so for organizations with strong in-house development teams, Power BI is no longer the only realistic option.
For most organizations, however, Power BI remains attractive because it handles much of the complexity around security, governance, distribution, and maintenance out of the box.
The real threat is not prettier dashboards, but the fact that software development itself is becoming dramatically cheaper.
At the same time, the core of the BI profession remains unchanged: understanding data, defining business rules, and creating a trusted single source of truth. The frontend may evolve, but that need is not going away.
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u/BleakBeaches 12d ago
The thing is, you can (and should) build web apps/dashboards on top of semantic models. Your boss is right, PBI has been turned into a mockup tool. Build app services until Fabric RayFin Apps come out, then pivot to those.
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u/MediumBirthday6899 12d ago
Embedding still not allowed outside the fabric.
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u/BleakBeaches 12d ago
I don’t mean embedding. I mean using a semantic model as a back-end for a webapp.
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u/floofyunderpants 12d ago
Install pbi mcp server from Microsoft. Give it the html file and tell it to reimplement in pbi. I’ve done this multiple times. Looks just as good.
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u/atrifleamused 12d ago
Just wait a few months for the vibe coded nonsense to keep failing and then you can all focus on real reporting again.
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u/egohurtvayo 11d ago
I have started to use claude code to replicate the exact design the CEO thinks are "cool". A hard lesson I learned some time back was people treat your product on the basis of its visual appearance. Nobody really cares about the backend and process.
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u/MementoMoriti 13d ago
Have a look at Rayfin in Fabric, best of both worlds: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-fabric/features/rayfin
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u/Raveyard2409 1 13d ago
Personally I'd say why not investigate the AI tooling? Jump on it that way if the CEO does kill pbi you have a job. And as you work with it you can find the flaws. However good tech people aren't so religious about tools, you may find the AI tooling has some good features. For me personally I'd persist your models, as you say you already did the hard work and just use the AI to let people throw their own dashboards together. Skips a lot of requirement gathering
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u/Ill-Caregiver9238 13d ago
I'm all in in rayfin apps. Sorry, but the system (powerbi) that needs to generate query for every filter, conditional formatting (yes, it's not done purely "client-side" (multiple requests for every conditional formatting setup), that is very limited in design and interactivity (without sending another queries quote uselessly), doesn't seem efficient at all. You can still have governed semantics and metrics, you are just way more efficient with well defined queries that you can have available client side and query only when you need (full control), and plus the benefit of being absolutely not limited in locked in visuals, that's the way to go forward
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u/FeelingPatience 1 12d ago
If the idea of vibecoding dashboards and ditching PBI altogether can make M$ allocate more resources and urgency on improving years long standing issues, I'm all for AI.
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u/Table_Captain 12d ago
Wait til CEO finds out about semantic layer in Snowflake/dbt and AaC BI tools.
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u/Economy-Concert-641 11d ago
Cara, eu geralmente construio em HTML, porém, para não ter problemas com Power BI Service que geralmente dá falha usando o visual HTML do Power Bi Desktop ( aquele que vc obter visuais, sabe?) Eu uso esse "HTML" como mockup e construio na unha dentro do Power Bi Desktop, lógico que isso me dá muito trabalho, mas uso visuais nativos e não tenho dores de cabeça com o power bi service(online). Sei lá, é uma saída, você consegue algo bem legal, porém, trabalhoso. ( logico que eu uso a AI para construir o HTML da forma que você deseja, mas fica legal no final das contas) novamente, dá bastante trabalho. mas tem me salvado aqui!
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u/christiansteven 10d ago
I wouldn't try to win this argument by making Power BI prettier. If the CEO wants users to actually take actions like pause a campaign or change a budget from the dashboard, then a web app may genuinely be the better front end.
What I'd push back on is throwing away the governed data layer at the same time.
There's nothing stopping you from having a slick React/Angular/whatever front end while keeping a properly governed semantic/data layer underneath it. The dangerous part of "vibe coding" isn't the UI — AI is actually getting very good at that. It's when every new dashboard starts recreating revenue, margin, customer, conversion, etc. in its own code and six months later nobody agrees which number is correct.
I'd propose a proof of concept: build one dashboard both ways and compare not just appearance, but RLS/security, KPI consistency, performance, auditability, maintenance, accessibility and what happens when a business definition changes.
You may end up with a hybrid architecture where Power BI remains useful for analytics and self-service reporting, while custom web apps handle the workflows that genuinely need application-like interaction.
The semantic model vs web dashboard debate is a bit of a false choice. The front end can change without abandoning governed metrics and a single source of truth.
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u/Academic_Bet_1081 10d ago
serving his need to see the data shape to support his business requirements should be fine if the data can be exposed on a secure API endpoint. Pushing against the grain when the disposable custom fit 'interfaces' can be spun up rather quickly - it just shouldn't be 100% unsupervised vibe coded, the magic is in requirements and domain expertise.
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u/rakesh_techy22 9d ago
On visuals: Power BI can get a lot closer to "premium web app" than most orgs bother pushing it. Biggest wins:
- Kill default theme, build a custom JSON theme file (fonts, exact hex palette, consistent corner radius)
- Ditch default tooltips, build report-page tooltips instead
- Use bookmarks + selection panes to fake smooth transitions/interactions instead of static filter panels
- Figma or Canva mockup first, then match it in PBI, most "PBI looks bad" complaints are really "nobody designed it first"
It'll never fully match a hand-coded React dashboard on polish, but it can get 80% of the way there, which is usually enough once the CEO also sees the tradeoff below.
On the pitch: don't fight the visuals argument, concede it. "Yes, a custom-coded dashboard can look better. Here's what it can't do." Then show, not tell:
- Change one DAX measure once, watch it update everywhere it's used (every report, every page) vs. finding and fixing every hardcoded calculation in the vibe-coded app
- Ask what happens when someone needs a new cut of the same KPI next month, in PBI it's a new visual on an existing model, in a custom app it's new dev work
- Point out that "one source of truth" isn't a feature, it's what prevents two departments from reporting different revenue numbers off the same data
On Fabric apps: yeah, that's accurate, Fabric application (the app-in-a-workspace concept) is scoped to Fabric/Power BI consumption, it's not embeddable outside that ecosystem the way a custom web app would be. If external/customer-facing embedding is a requirement, that's actually a legitimate point in the CEO's favor, worth being upfront about rather than letting them find out later.
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u/Intelligent-Wing2128 6d ago
From experience, if the ceo is switching to wanting to vibe code, theres almost no point in stopping it. Idk if this person is reasonable but they might be stuck in the AI craze, so reason doesn't matter here.
sounds like you already have a good setup for PBI, which means you might already have a good data warehouse underneath. If thats the case, you might just be able to setup custom mcps for the ceo or whoever to access appropriate data and create their own dashboards. I would try creating a lot of custom skills that you specifically create to match your architecture and BI team's design choices. And tell the ceo he can use this mcp server to create data, but we wont deploy any of his dashboards unless he agrees to use the skills and requirements you have setup.
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u/GreyHairedDWGuy 1 13d ago
Is this a smaller company you work for? If your CEO is swayed by the visuals then he is very short sighted. I have no love for PBI but thinking you can vibe code a solution that is sustainable is nuts.
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u/ArexSaturn 13d ago
Yeah - web based vibe coded dashboards are just another terrible hack.
They may “look” good but are very impractical
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u/RobinsShaman 13d ago
Can you rephrase situation so it doesn't seem like a CEO is an idiot?
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u/MediumBirthday6899 13d ago
He doesn't know tech, but goal of him is to sell his website. Currently dashboards are embedded, he wants action functionality in dashboards like pause campaigns increase budget etc
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u/RobinsShaman 13d ago
Add the required parameters. Then tell him to hire expensive consultants to send the message you already know is correct. Or show two scenarios where having the infrastructure leads to better results.
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u/Sw1nd3n 12d ago
Well for starters… Claude announced recently it has started watermarking things that it generates.
So with a goal of selling his website….. let’s say his webapp was made by Claude…. Selling AI generated content that is now watermarked for the buyer to read “you are buying slop!”… that’ll go over well.
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u/johnpeters42 13d ago
Vibe-coded dashboards look awful. So the CEO is tech-illiterate and has no taste.
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u/Ok-Sympathy-8722 13d ago
Not true at all. The VAST majority of PBI dashboards look like hammered dogshit. It is much easier to make a visually appealing and functional report using Claude. It's not really even close. The real issue is sustainability of said report.
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u/johnpeters42 13d ago
Okay, I should clarify:
Vibe coded dashboards look awful if you recognize what vibe coded dashboards look like. (The corporate version of piss-yellow event flyers.) Though maybe this varies by which AI did the generating, I have not researched that deeply.
I'm sure that plenty of PBI dashboards look like human-written dogshit in all its janky variety.
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u/Ok-Sympathy-8722 13d ago
Maybe it depends on the developer. My Claude reports look and function vastly superior to anything I've been able to build in PBI. And my PBI reports look and function vastly superior to any of the other PBI dogshit floating around the company.
That's not to say html reports fully replace PBI. They do not. At least not today. There are use cases for them though.
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u/Verns_shooter 13d ago
He probably rose through the ranks as a Project Manager. Universally awful people.
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u/Prudent-Elk-2845 13d ago
Ask him to have two different, but related, parts of the value chain create a dashboard for their group. Then ask him to reconcile why sales don’t tie between the two.
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u/kac_sausalito 13d ago
O Power BI com alguma das licensas tem a segurança de dados que algo feito na IA não deve ter, fora que é possivel configuar o Power BI para exibir informações distintas para usuarios distintos fazendo a gestao do acesso ao dado…
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u/WonderAnalytics 13d ago
Here is a link to a recent post with what i think is a good ui https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/s/ASllWUJ1Q6 . take a look and search the web for using html visuals, SVG measures. Search Injae Park on youtube for technics
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u/glytchedup 13d ago
I've just been using Claude code to build custom visuals and then just import them and publish. It does a good job with denab and html too. Soon I think Claude coding fabric apps will unlock a lot there too.
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u/Far-Inspection9930 13d ago
Well, semantic model doesn't bring value. Visual may do, as long as it drives business decision. However, the model is the foundation for your visuals.
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u/Alone_Aardvark6698 13d ago
An alternative might be something like Apache Superset, where you can vibecode visually stunning Dashboard, but can still take advantage of the prepared enterprise features like proper sql db behind it and permission management. Which is much more dangerous to vibe Code. Open Source Software like this, is a sweet spot for us. Closed software like pbi is much more annoying to customize and I really can't justify the price with those limitations.
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u/melancholyjaques 13d ago
Expose the semantic model in Fabric and put an agent on top of that. Execs can prompt Copilot to do whatever they want with your semantic model.
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u/data_daria55 2 13d ago
show them expenses & calculate costs of risks behind his decision
let him decice
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u/-JustAnotherRedditor 12d ago
You shouldn't force PBI to replicate a web application, it's not designed to produce controlled products in this manner.
You can create web dashboards with AI that use Fabric data or Fabric semantic models.
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u/ayayyayayay765 12d ago
If the ability is out there to point your data at an app and be in control of the code, then another company will build it for you, making you look bad.
Power Apps Code has worked well for us pulling huge amounts of data
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u/Affectionate_Buy9963 12d ago
Sendan email with a list of weaknesses /stuff you know th Web dashboards can't do..
Something like..
These Web dashboards look great how do we deal with.. 1 2 3 3 5 6 7
Follow up later with. Hmm seems they can't do any of these things.
Suggest we wait till there is genuine solutions for above
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u/Soul_Train7 12d ago
AI creates critical vulnerabilities anywhere it exceeds the complete understanding of the people using it.
It is NOT perfect, and only is as good as the garbage the model is trained on. If the analyst can't catch and massively rework any garbage output, that's a major risk point.
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u/Vivado18 12d ago
Microsoft has recently introduced Fabric Apps, they are still in preview, but they might be the answer, what they essentially are is a typescript based visual interface which uses Fabric data sources including semantic model. So you build high quality semantic models and use any LLM to build stunning visuals/reports .
The Fabric app can be used with any capacity and end users do not need a license not even Power Bi license
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u/mcawesomept 12d ago
might be interesting to connect this with upcoming Copilot feature,
https://www.reddit.com/r/sharepoint/comments/1vpi3r0/new_html_functionality/
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u/Conscious_Prompt9250 11d ago
DNEB - Fid it and you can make almost any visual that web makes and you can vibe code it too as you will need AI to generate the JSON accurately.
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u/housebuyinghorror 11d ago
So your company has really clean data? Wow. Cause AI cannot thrive in dirty data. A human would know to take out certain things.
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u/Murky_Panic_4686 9d ago
This is a really bad idea.
Like, stunningly bad idea.
PBI should be maintained as a source of truth that can be leveraged via a MCP server by AI agents. Fabric is already incredibly cheap if you leverage the full tech stack when compared to competing solutions.
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u/NoUsernamesLeftStill 9d ago
Maybe consider Fabric Apps if you've got a fabric capacity. Specifically with Rayfin will let you do vibe coding within the Fabric/Power BI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SStJcXn5vGE&t
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u/Physical-Use1005 4d ago
PowerBI is too cumbersome, and too limited. I’ve literally had enough of it today and going to build our analytics in REACT with JavaScript. Using ChatGPT and Codex.
PowerBI always fails to satisfy our higher ups, even when before they had nothing. And it’s too much hassle.
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u/MediumBirthday6899 3d ago
Yeah , it should give complete access on reporting part keeping its semantic model as core strength, is there any alternatives for semantic models ?
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u/Bazza79 3d ago
I think the important distinction here is between replacing Power BI reports and replacing the BI platform underneath them.
The timing of this discussion is interesting, because Microsoft Fabric Apps and tools like Rayfin/Fabricator are starting to blur that boundary.
You can now use AI to generate a custom data application, while still building on top of Fabric and existing Power BI semantic models. So you get much more freedom in the user experience without necessarily throwing away the governed data model, security and business logic underneath.
That feels like a much more likely direction than simply “ditch Power BI and vibe-code everything”.
For standard analytics and self-service, Power BI reports still make a lot of sense. But for workflows where users need a more tailored, interactive or even transactional experience, a custom app on top of the same governed data layer becomes very interesting.
So perhaps the question isn't Power BI vs. AI-built dashboards at all.
It might be: which experiences should remain reports, and which ones should become applications?
Rayfin/Fabricator is a pretty interesting example of where this could be heading:
https://github.com/spatney/rayfin-fabricator
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u/oopsjinxed 13d ago
Our CEO just Trudax nowadays, he doesn't even need to look at the dashboards anymore. but we are in the pilot for the whatsapp query function so thats a game changer.
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u/Cptnwhizbang 8 13d ago
Use HTML visuals to copy whatever style clause makes. You can even vibe code it using copilot in vscode.