How to share Power Bi App with external user & set permissions for external users?

[bi_devloper]

Hi All,

It would be great if you could help me with one of my query.

From power bI workspace, i created an app that i need to share with an external user. So by doing this, does that mean he will have access to share the app further with other folks.

If he shares it with other folks, will those folks have access to the app? or do they request access from App onwer or can  external user himself grant access to app to those folks?

My requirement is to share the app with one external user & he should be able to share it with anyone he wants. Is there any specific permission i need to set while granting the access to external user.

[TomMartens]

Hey @bi_devloper ,

you can't protect your pbix file!
If you want to sell content, you can consider to create a template app: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-template-apps-overview

Regards,
Tom

[bi_devloper]

Thanks for providing very informative links.

[TomMartens · Accepted solution]

Hey @bi_devloper ,

these two articles explain everything about external sharing and how to onboard the external users to your Azure Active Directory.

• Distribute content to external guest users with Azure AD B2B - Power BI | Microsoft Docs
• Distribute Power BI content to external guest users using Azure Active Directory B2B - Power BI | Mi...

Please be aware that accessing content has to be licensed, this does not change if external users are accessing content inside a Power BI app. There are three accessing content can be licensed for external users:

1.  the app is backed by Premium per capacity licensing model, this means no license has to be assigned to the external user
2. a PRO or a PPU license will be assigned by your M365 admin
3. the external user is using his own PRO license, this is not sufficient if your content resides inside a PPU workspace

Hopefully, this helps to tackle your challenge.

Regards,

Tom

[bibinthomas]

Hi @TomMartens ,

I have created a Power BI report in a pro workspace and published as an app. I am sharing the report with external users outside my organization. Till last week the users were able to access the report and now from this week they are getting an error" Upgrade to Power BI Pro". Is there any solution so that the external users can access the report(even the free users). I could see that the premium capacity is costly.

[TomMartens]

Hey @bibinthomas ,

if a PRO workspace backs your data, all users need a license. You can provide external users with a PRO license. Free users can not access content inside a PRO workspace.

If you have more questions, please open a new thread.

Regards,
Tom

[bi_devloper]

Hi @TomMartens ,

Thank you so much for your reply and providing very informative links. It answered almost all my queries except 1.

I also wanted to know if it is possible to somehow license a .pbix file? In other words if I sell a .pbix fille to customers how can I ensure that they can't simply share it with others? If I'm building a product, I just want to make sure that my code is not visible to anyone or if i can hide some piece of code.