Power BI
Power BI alerts and notifications: where Kisu fits
Understand native Power BI alerts and when separate BigQuery or Google Sheets checks can help your team monitor the same business metric.
One business metric, two separate workflows
If you search for a Power BI alert, start with the alerts already available in Power BI. You may not need another tool. Kisu fits a different case: you want scheduled Slack checks on business data that already exists in BigQuery or Google Sheets, alongside your Power BI reporting.
What native Power BI alerts do
Microsoft documents data alerts for gauge, KPI, and card tiles on dashboards in the Power BI service. You set a threshold for the numeric value. Alerts evaluate refreshed data; they do not watch a static screenshot or every chart in a report. The person who creates an alert is the person who sees it.
For this native dashboard-tile workflow, open the tile menu, choose Manage alerts, add a rule, set the threshold, and choose the available notification options. Availability depends on the tile, permissions, and your Power BI environment. See Microsoft’s current data-alert guide for supported behavior and requirements. Other Microsoft alert workflows may have different capabilities.
Choose the alert at the right layer
| Question | Native dashboard-tile alerts | Kisu |
|---|---|---|
| What is checked? | A supported Power BI dashboard tile | A BigQuery Boolean query or Sheets column metric |
| When is data evaluated? | On refreshed data, under Power BI’s alert rules | On a chosen 12- or 24-hour schedule |
| What must already exist? | A supported tile and access to the dashboard | The required data in BigQuery or Sheets |
| Does it read Power BI measures? | The supported tile uses your model | No. Reproduce the business rule in the source data |
Example: monitor the revenue behind a sales dashboard
Suppose your Power BI sales dashboard uses an orders dataset that is also available in BigQuery. Keep the dashboard for regional trends and drill-downs. In Kisu, write a query that compares completed-order revenue for the previous complete day with your agreed review floor.
You must encode the same status filters, refunds, currency conversion, and timezone as the dashboard. A raw sum in BigQuery is not automatically equivalent to a DAX measure. Validate both values for the same period before turning on the check.
Connect BigQuery in Kisu, test your one-row Boolean query, select a tested Slack destination, and choose a 12- or 24-hour schedule. Kisu queues a message for every successful matching check. Read the BigQuery-to-Slack guide for the setup flow.
Be clear about what Kisu does not connect to
Kisu has no direct Power BI connector. It does not read report visuals, execute DAX, change your semantic model, or forward native Power BI notifications. It also does not export data from Power BI for you. Your own pipeline must make the metric available in BigQuery or Google Sheets.
Data refresh matters in either approach. A successful source-data check can still read stale business data if an upstream import stopped. Where freshness matters, add a separate BigQuery condition that checks the latest ingestion timestamp.
When to keep the native option
If your only need is a supported dashboard-tile threshold, try the native Power BI notification first. Consider Kisu when your team wants separate source-data rules and scheduled Slack delivery without moving its reporting workflow. Neither option should be assumed to provide instant or safety-critical monitoring.