One thing you can bet on with Azure Government is constant updates from Microsoft every month of the year. This year has some of the biggest updates in the history of this popular cloud software. In March, one new exciting add to Azure Government was Publish to Web, an inside feature through the recently added Power BI Pro.
With this feature, posting and managing content becomes all the easier and more efficient. Embedding specific Power BI visualizations can instantly go into things like blog posts, or on social media.
Once there, it’s easy to edit this content, as well as share it (or un-share it) with easy clicks.
All of this comes to you with an open ear from Microsoft on how they can improve things.
Here’s how Publish to Web could help your government office when posting media.
Publishing a Report to the Web
Microsoft warns that when you published a Power BI visualization to the web, everyone can see it. This is perhaps your intention, especially when needing to spread vital information from your government agency during times of crisis.
It’s easy to do, and it merely involves selecting File, and then “Publish to Web.” You’ll then have to create an embed code. Before you do, the program gives you a preview of the text you’re posting to assure that it’s safe to publish to the public.
Sending the Content in an Email Link
Perhaps you want to alert key people in various governmental departments about the content you’ve posted. You can do this through the embed box mentioned above. It gives you a code that you can send to a personalized email. Or, it gives you another option to use an embed code to post the content directly on your website.
During emergencies, this can become an essential way to get information quickly online. No more do you have to go through protracted steps to proliferate key data or info to everyone in cyberspace.
Keep in mind that you can only create one embed code for each report sent.
Setting Up Viewing Modes
How people view your content is going to matter, especially with so many people reading on mobile devices. Microsoft lets you take command on how you want the content to look.
Before you embed, you’ll be given a preview box that shows what it’s going to look like. It may have to involve some editing to fit appropriately. As such, you can choose a “Fit to Page” option as a bit of a default.
Through iFrame, you can also adjust the height and width of the piece you’re posting. The program gives you quick recommendations on how to fit a piece on a page with awkward size. In some cases, it may only require adding 56 pixels to the height dimension to fill an entire page correctly.
Managing Your Embed Codes
Take some time to learn about managing your embed codes, because you may need to make revisions to your content for re-posting. Simply select “Settings” and “Manage Embed Codes” for various options.
It’s here where you’ll be given a complete list of all the embed codes you’re using for content. You’re given freedom to either edit them, or retrieve them if you’ve lost one you need.
Deleting an embed code is merely one-click, though it gets rid of all associated links you posted. When you realize you made an error in an initial posting, this is the best quick fix.
Updating Content
While making an edit to your embedded content is easy to do, Microsoft notes it requires an hour for the updates to go live.
No doubt they’ll improve on this in the future, but it’s still better than any other “Publish to the Web” solution. In the world of government, you’ll be able to get word out fast during critical moments and still update millions of people within a short time.
More Information
Keep reading us at cFocus Software Incorporated as we study the beneficial features and recent updates to Azure Government.