Paying for Premium Capacity but PowerBI 'free' users still can't view my reports

[dapster105]

Hi,

Everything I've been able to find online about the PowerBI licensing system suggests that if I have a report hosted on a Premium Capacity, then I can share that report for viewing with other members of my organisation, even if they only have PowerBI Free licenses.

If that is not the case, please can someone point me to an up-to-date reference documenting the fact.

If I am correct, then it is currently broken for my capacity - please advise how I can get this resolved since there are no links to any format support channels - only this community.

Thanks,

Tim

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @dapster105 

You need to understand there are two products, Premium Per User (PPU) and Premium Capacity. They are different licences with different attributes.

If you have a PPU licence, you can mark Workspaces as PPU and share content with others who have a PPU licence. However a PPU licence does NOT provide access to Free licence users.

If you have a Premium Capacity licence you can mark Workspaces as Premium Capacity and content CAN be shared with Free licence users.

A Premium Capacity Licence is an organization licence, usually an organization buys a Premium Capacity licence when it has > 500 users who need to access the content. 

A PPU licence is a Personal licence, because PPU licences can only share content on a PPU workspace with other PPU licences it is usually purchased by smaller organizations who want to use some of the Premium features but don't want the costs of the full Premium Capacity. Typically they will buy a PPU licence for every user that needs access to content.

see:Types of licenses for Power BI business users - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps

Stuart

[dapster105]

Thanks @Burningsuit that's really helpful. I actually realised that our premium capacity is for a third type - Embedded, as it primarily serves reports through our client-facing application.

To me it makes no sense that this would disallow sharing within the organisation since I can literally embed the report onto a webpage and share it with the whole world. However, it's an internal report so I'd prefer to rely on the normal internal sharing mechanisms and permissions.

I suppose if I have to I can embed the report onto a web page especially for the purpose of sharing it internally but that seems like a crazy thing to have to do. It wouldn't be the first crazy thing about PBI licensing though!

Tim