Configure SharePoint Storage for Reports Center

This article explains how Reporting Intelligence connects to your Microsoft SharePoint storage and describes both configuration methods: the automated method and the manual method that uses a PowerShell script.

Overview

Reporting Intelligence stores your uploaded Excel files and the files that reports generate in a SharePoint document library that belongs to your organization. Before Reporting Intelligence can write to that library, you must grant the application access to the SharePoint site on behalf of your organization.

The access is deliberately narrow. Reporting Intelligence receives write access to one site that you select, not to all sites in your tenant. Both configuration methods grant that site-scoped access. They differ only in how you perform the grant.

  • Automated configuration: You approve the access request in your browser, and Reporting Intelligence performs the grant for you, but you need to specify the site and library identifiers by hand.

  • Manual configuration: You perform the grant by running a PowerShell script, and then you enter the site and library identifiers by hand.

Choose a Configuration Method

Use the following comparison to decide which method suits your organization.

Aspect

Automated

Manual (PowerShell)

Role you need

Global Administrator of Microsoft 365 tenant and owner of the target SharePoint site

Global Administrator of Microsoft 365 tenant and owner of the target SharePoint site

Software required

A supported browser

PowerShell 7 and the PnP.PowerShell module

Site and library selection

 Site ID, Site Name, Drive ID, and Drive Name entered manually

Site ID, Site Name, Drive ID, and Drive Name entered manually

Typical duration

A few minutes

Longer, because you install PowerShell 7 and run the script yourself

Resulting access

Write access to the selected site

Write access to the selected site

Both methods produce the same result. Use the manual method only if your organization policy prevents you from granting consent in the browser, or if you're maintaining an environment that was configured with a script before the automated method became available.

Automated Configuration

In the automated method, you approve the access request in the browser and then specify the site and library identifiers by hand. Reporting Intelligence performs the permission grant for you.

How the Automated Grant Works

The automated method uses two applications registered in the insightsoftware tenant. Understanding the difference between them helps you review the consent prompts and clean up afterward.

Application

Purpose

Scope of access

Reporting Intelligence Admin

Grants the Reporting Intelligence application access to the site that you select.

Temporary. Required only during configuration. You can revoke it afterward.

Reporting Intelligence

Reads and writes your report files during day-to-day work.

Permanent. Limited to the single site that you select.

Before You Start

Before you start, make sure that:

  • You're signed in to Reporting Intelligence as a Platform Administrator.

  • You're a Global Administrator in your Microsoft 365 tenant and you're the owner of the target SharePoint site.

Configure SharePoint Automatically

You need a place to store your uploaded Excel files and the files that reports create when they run. Reporting Intelligence supports SharePoint storage.

In this step, you connect Reporting Intelligence to your SharePoint site so that insightsoftware can read from and write to your storage. Reporting Intelligence requests access, and you specify the site and library identifiers by hand. This step describes an automatic configuration. If you want to configure SharePoint manually, see Manual Configuration Using PowerShell.

The user completing this step must be a Global Administrator in the Microsoft 365 tenant. Additionally, the user must also be an owner of the site they're providing access to.

To automatically configure SharePoint library, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Reporting Intelligence > Reports Center > Reports.

  2. On the Reports page, select Settings and choose the Automatic option.

  3. Specify the following properties:

    • Site ID - the unique identifier of your SharePoint site. To find it, open your SharePoint site URL in a browser and append /_api/site/id to it (for example, https://yourdomain.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSiteName/_api/site/id). The Site ID is the value displayed after Edm.Guid.

    • Site Name - the display name of your SharePoint site, visible in the SharePoint admin center under Sites > Active sites.

    • Drive ID - the unique identifier of the document library. To find it, open Microsoft Graph Explorer, sign in, and run the following query: GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/{site-id}/drives. The Drive ID is the id value for your document library in the response.

    • Drive Name - the display name of the document library, visible in your SharePoint site under Site contents.

  4. Select Save Changes. The page refreshes and displays the InitiateAdmin Consent button.

  5. Select Initiate Admin Consent. You're redirected to Microsoft, where you sign in and provide consent to the Admin Application on behalf of your organization. After consent is provided to the Admin Application, Reporting Intelligence navigates to a second consent page.

  6. On the second consent page, provide consent to the Regular Application that's working with your SharePoint site. The software redirects you to SharePoint configuration screen.

  7. Select Save Changes.

You have configured SharePoint for Reporting Intelligence.

Note:

Modifying your SharePoint environment outside Reporting Intelligence, for example changing the connected directory, renaming or moving site components, or deleting files, breaks your existing configuration and requires you to reconfigure the integration.

After the configuration is complete, your administrator can revoke the elevated permissions used to set up this connection. For more information, see Revoke the Temporary Permissions.

Revoke the Temporary Permissions

The Reporting Intelligence Admin application is needed only while you configure the connection. After you save the configuration, insightsoftware recommends that you remove its consent. Your reports continue to run, because they use the Reporting Intelligence application and its site-scoped access.

  1. Go to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. Go to Enterprise Applications > All applications.

  3. Find and open the Reporting Intelligence Admin application.

  4. Select Permissions and revoke the granted consent.

  5. Optional: Delete the service principal if your organization no longer needs it.

Note:

If you revoke the consent and later need to connect a different SharePoint site or document library, repeat the automated configuration. The consent request appears again.

Manual Configuration using PowerShell

In the manual method, you grant the access with a PowerShell script and then enter the site and library identifiers by hand. Use this method only when the automated method isn't an option for your organization.

Before You Start

Important: To run the script, you must be a SharePoint Administrator or Site Collection Administrator for the target site.

Before you start, make sure that you have the following information available:

  • Target SharePoint site URL in the format: https://{domain}.sharepoint.com/sites/{SiteName}

  • Tenant ID of your Microsoft 365 tenant

Make sure you also have the following prerequisites in place:

  • PowerShell 7 installed. If it isn't installed, download it from the Reporting Intelligence platform.

  • PnP.PowerShell module. The script installs this automatically if it isn't already present.

Grant Site-Level Access using PowerShell

In this procedure, you run a PowerShell script to grant Reporting Intelligence explicit write access to your SharePoint site. Complete this procedure before you enter the connection details in Reports Center.

Open PowerShell 7 and run the following commands one by one:

  1. Configure environment variables. Replace the placeholder values with your actual information:

    $TargetSiteUrl = "https://yourdomain.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSiteName"

    $TargetTenantId = "your-tenant-id"

    $ExternalAppId = "1c59367d-d227-4628-a712-94fd9c58242e"

    $DisplayName = "Reporting Intelligence"

    $Permissions = "Write"

  2. Install the PnP.PowerShell module if it isn't already installed:

    if (-not (Get-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell -ListAvailable)) { Install-Module PnP.PowerShell -Scope CurrentUser -Force }

  3. Create a temporary Microsoft Entra ID app for interactive authentication. Copy the generated Client ID from the output — you need it in the next step:

    Register-PnPEntraIDAppForInteractiveLogin -ApplicationName "TempPermissionApp" -Tenant $TargetTenantId

  4. Connect to SharePoint. Replace TEMP_APP_CLIENT_ID with the Client ID from the previous step:

    Connect-PnPOnline -Url $TargetSiteUrl -Interactive -ClientId "TEMP_APP_CLIENT_ID"

  5. Grant Reporting Intelligence write permission to the SharePoint site:

    Grant-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission -AppId $ExternalAppId -DisplayName $DisplayName -Permissions Write -Site $TargetSiteUrl

You've granted site-level access. You can verify that the permission was applied by running:

Get-PnPAzureADAppSitePermission -AppIdentity $ExternalAppId

Enter the Connection Details Manually

In this procedure, you provide the identifiers of the site and the document library that you granted access to.

  1. Go to Reporting Intelligence > Reports Center > Reports.

  2. Select Settings and complete the admin consent step.

  3. In the Connection Details section, enter the following values:

    • Site ID

    • Site Name

    • Drive ID

    • Drive Name

  4. Select Save Configuration.

You've configured SharePoint settings to enable insightsoftware to read and write to your storage.

Disconnect SharePoint

You can disconnect your storage at any time by opening Reports Center > Reports > Settings and selecting Disconnect.

Note:

Modifying your SharePoint environment outside Reporting Intelligence, for example changing the connected directory, renaming or moving site components, or deleting files, breaks your existing configuration and requires you to reconfigure the integration.

Related articles

  • Configure Reporting Intelligence

Was this article helpful?

We're sorry to hear that.