You published the report. Now the wall screen shows a Microsoft sign-in box instead of your numbers, and someone has to walk over with a keyboard again.
Pickcel runs 150,000+ screens across 70+ countries
Power BI digital signage means running a published Power BI report on a screen that nobody is signed into. A Pickcel signage player holds an authenticated Power BI session on behalf of a named Microsoft account, renders the report view on a set interval, and pushes it to one or many displays. The difference from a browser in kiosk mode is that the session is managed and renewed by the platform rather than by a person standing at the machine.
Turning a spare machine into a TV dashboard with a browser and F11 works. It works for about a day.
Microsoft Entra ID governs how long a Power BI browser session stays valid, and your tenant's sign-in frequency policy decides when it ends. Nobody notices at 2 a.m. By the time the floor fills up, the largest screen in the building is advertising a login form.
A mini PC tucked behind a display takes a Windows update at 3 a.m. and comes back on the lock screen. The report is fine. The path to it is gone.
Tolerable for a screen outside the analytics team's own room. Not tolerable for a branch in another city, where a broken dashboard sits untouched for a week because the person who could fix it has never been to that office.
Published, live account
Holds the session, re-authenticates on schedule
Renders on a set refresh interval
No one signed in, no login prompt
Problem you have today
Screen shows a Microsoft login prompt by morning
How Pickcel handles it
Stored credentials plus a 2FA secret re-authenticate on a schedule you set, ahead of the tenant session lapsing
What you get
Screens that are still showing the report on Monday morning
Problem you have today
A spare PC behind the display sleeps or reboots
How Pickcel handles it
A managed signage player relaunches its assigned content on boot
What you get
Recovery without anyone walking to the screen
Problem you have today
Fixing a remote screen means sending someone to site
How Pickcel handles it
Every screen is configured and republished from one console
What you get
One person maintaining screens across every location
Problem you have today
Only the report fills the display, nothing else
How Pickcel handles it
Multizone layouts place the report alongside alerts, a clock, or a shift message
What you get
One screen carrying the dashboard and the context around it
| Problem you have today | How Pickcel handles it | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Screen shows a Microsoft login prompt by morning | Stored credentials plus a 2FA secret re-authenticate on a schedule you set, ahead of the tenant session lapsing | Screens that are still showing the report on Monday morning |
| A spare PC behind the display sleeps or reboots | A managed signage player relaunches its assigned content on boot | Recovery without anyone walking to the screen |
| Fixing a remote screen means sending someone to site | Every screen is configured and republished from one console | One person maintaining screens across every location |
| Only the report fills the display, nothing else | Multizone layouts place the report alongside alerts, a clock, or a shift message | One screen carrying the dashboard and the context around it |
Four things decide whether this works in your environment. Check all four before booking anything.
Pickcel signs into Power BI as a real account, so that account needs whatever a human viewer would need. Microsoft's rule is that a free licence can view shared content only when both the report and its underlying semantic model sit in Premium capacity, and only on an F64 SKU or larger. Anything smaller, or content outside Premium capacity, needs a Pro or Premium Per User licence. Check your own tenant, because Microsoft revises this (Microsoft Learn, Licenses and subscriptions for business users, updated 2026-07-23). For general Power BI sharing methods beyond an unattended screen, see how to share Power BI dashboards and reports.
The dashboard app authenticates directly against Microsoft. Federated sign-in routes, where the login redirects to Google, Apple, or your organisation's own identity provider, are not supported. Most teams create a dedicated account for signage rather than borrowing an analyst's, which keeps the screen's view separate from anyone's personal workspace.
Pickcel needs the secret itself, not a six-digit code, because it generates fresh codes each time it re-authenticates. Recovering one after the fact usually means resetting 2FA on that account.
Copy the full report URL straight from your browser address bar. The player needs outbound access to Power BI and to Pickcel, both over standard HTTPS, and it runs on Pickcel's digital signage software. Pickcel is SOC 2 Type II certified and ISO 27001 certified, which is usually the first thing an IT reviewer asks before approving stored credentials for a service account.
The sequence below is the current flow in the Pickcel console.
In the console, open Content > Apps and search for Dashboard.
Select Create App, name the instance, and choose Power BI from the dashboard type list.
Paste the full report URL into the Dashboard URL field.
Enter the Microsoft email, password, and authenticator secret, then select Generate Auth Token.
Use the Pickcel Dashboard Screen Mapper Chrome extension to select the region of the report you want on screen, and paste the code it returns.
Set the refresh interval and session expiry. Pickcel's documentation suggests 60 minutes for data that changes daily, and a 5-hour session expiry.
Turn on auto-scroll if the report runs taller than the display.
Save. The instance appears under Content > Media, ready to assign through a Composition or Quick Play.
First load can take up to two minutes while the session is established. If the credentials are wrong, the screen stalls on the Microsoft login page instead of failing quietly, which is the fastest way to catch a mistyped password before the display goes public. Screenshots of each step are in Pickcel's Power BI setup documentation.
So you can One semantic model for every leadership meeting
The session expiry value you set tells Pickcel to sign in again from scratch on that cadence, using the stored credentials and the 2FA secret. Set it shorter than your tenant's sign-in frequency policy so re-authentication happens before Microsoft would have ended the session, not after. Tenant policies differ and administrators change them, so ask your Entra ID admin for the current value rather than working from a default.
Signs in again before Microsoft ends the session
The last successfully rendered view stays on the display until the next refresh succeeds. That is better than a blank screen, and it carries a real risk worth designing around: a stale dashboard looks exactly like a current one. Put a visible "last updated" element in the layout so anyone reading the board can tell.
Last rendered view stays on the display
The player reloads its assigned composition when it comes back up, including the dashboard instance, without a keyboard or a person. Power cuts and scheduled restarts stop being incidents that need a ticket.
Reloads the assigned composition on its own
See a Power BI report held live on a screen for 20 minutes.
The same dashboard hub carries these tools. See Power BI vs Tableau if you are weighing the two. Teams running more than one tool usually put them in a single rotation on one screen rather than buying a second display.
Bring us the report URL and we will show you the same view running unattended before you commit to anything. Check current plans and pricing if budget is the open question.
