What Is Displagent?

Distribution

Displagent is a third-party, cross-platform desktop application created for Power BI users to easily configure and execute Power BI digital signage. It is built with a robust web technology framework called Electron, enabling it to run on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux devices (Raspberry Pi devices are quite popular).

Metadata

Displagent does not create or edit content in your Power BI tenant. Instead, it uses the metadata of your Power BI artifacts (such as reports and dashboards) and the Power BI Javascript SDK to embed your Power BI content on its Chromium page. Using Displagent, you can create advanced slideshows for your Power BI artifacts and store those slideshows in one, central place that all of your Displagent installations can access.

Common Use Cases

Displagent is ideal for kiosk-style use cases where you have a TV display with important metrics that you want to share with your company. However, it is also perfectly suitable to run as a local desktop application on a user's computer, such as a manager's laptop who wants to monitor production metrics in realtime.

Countless types of industries have a need for kiosk-style data displays, particularly companies in the manufacturing, distribution, logistics, infrastructure, and technology sectors. If you are a Power BI or IT consultancy company, or even a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, you might find that one or more of your clients have this need.

Why Build It?

It turns out, this particular need is a very real, valid use case in the Power BI community, and an adequate Microsoft solution for this need simply does not exist. In particular, Microsoft announced that it has discontinued its Windows 10 Power BI kiosk app. And even before that, many Power BI users have expressed a desire for advanced slideshow mechanics beyond simply embedding a Power BI report or Power BI dashboard onto a web page.

Displagent is here to meet those needs head on.