Share PBI reports with guests

[Michenzi]

Hi,

Is there any way to share a Power BI report to a guest within an organization without that guest needing a Power BI Pro license assigned to their account?

[v-xiaoyan-msft]

Hi @Michenzi ,

Agree with @TomMartens & @Burningsuit .

As mentioned in the article above，"The guest user must have the proper licensing in place to view the content that you shared. There are a few ways to make sure the user has a proper license: use Power BI Premium, assign a Power BI Pro license, get a Premium Per User (PPU) license, or use the guest's Power BI Pro license."

If you don't want to assign licenses to guest users or if they don't have the right licenses themselves. You are also not using Power BI Premium. Then Power BI may not meet your needs at this stage.

Hope it helps,

Community Support Team _ Caitlyn Yan

If this post helps then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @Michenzi 

If your organisation gets a Premium Capacity licence, any Reports or Dashboards on a Premium workspace can be shared with guest having only a Power BI free licence. You can also create an App from the Premium workspace that can be shared with guests with only a Power BI Free licence. A Power BI licence of some sort is required for Row Level Security to work in the Dataset and Reports or Dasboards created from it. 

There is also a "Publish to Web" option that places a copy of the Report on apps.powerbi.com for anonymous access by anyone on the Internet, but of course that makes the report public, and is not possible if you have used Row Level Security.

Hope this helps

Stuart 

[Michenzi]

Hi @Burningsuit 

Thank you for the response. We're a relatively small company so the cost of a Power BI Capacity license is kind of out of reach for us.

I attempted to creat a new Premium workspace and published the app containing the report, but the app still required the guest account to have a Pro account. The guest account did have a free license attached to it, and the the workspace was updated to a Premium workspace as well.

Ultimately we're looking to publish Power BI reports to Teams for guests to view without requiring them to purchase a Power BI Pro license, and without us having to purchase a capacity license.

Thank you again for the help.

[Burningsuit]

Hi @Michenzi ,

If you're talking about a "Premium Per User" licence, with a workspace like this...

then you'll need a PPU licence to access anything on that workspace. PPU does not enable access by users with a Free licence. That "universal access" is only available with a "Premium Capacity" licence.

As a small organisation you're best option is to purchase Pro licences for everyone that needs access. Untill you get ipas 400 users it's cheaper to all have Pro licences rather than get a Premium Capacity licence. 

Youre last paragraph is not possible with the licencing of Power BI, you'll all need some sort of licence.

Hope this helps

Stuart

[marmo]

Hello @Burningsuit ,

I work for the same company and am involved in this issue as well. Can you please comment on this documentation from Microsoft that appears to contradict the proposed solution?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/admin/service-admin-azure-ad-b2b

"Licensing

The guest user must have the proper licensing in place to view the content that you shared. There are a few ways to make sure the user has a proper license: use Power BI Premium, assign a Power BI Pro license, get a Premium Per User (PPU) license, or use the guest's Power BI Pro license."

Thank you.

[Burningsuit]

Hi @marmo 

I'm afraid that wording is ambiguous and you're reading it wrong.

Look at this Microsoft page comparing PPU and Premium Capacity.

Pricing & Product Comparison | Microsoft Power BI

You'll see that Premium Capacity has the column "Consume content without a per-user license" ticked,  PPU does NOT.  But you don't have to believe the documents or me. That is why @Michenzi still needs a licence to access reports on a PPU workspace. It is the way PPU is designed to work. Only Premium Capacity enables "Universal Access". Check with your Microsoft Representative.  It may not be what you want to hear, but it's correct. 

Stuart

[marmo]

@Burningsuit I respectfully and completely disagree. I feel that you are wrong. The license terms set forth in that link are not ambiguous. I interepret your response as a claim that Microsoft's documentation is wrong and you are correct. It is possible that Power BI is broken and PPU licenses should provide access for guests. When I asked Zones to quote me on PPU licenses a couple months ago they could not even give me a quote because it was so new.

This is nothing new. MS licensing is usually a incomprehensible minefield. We will attempt to solicit support from Microsoft to get definitive answer. Thank you for your time.

[TomMartens]

Hey @marmo ,

PPU licenses provide access to a workspace that is backed by PPU license:

A PPU license allows users to access content inside this type of workspace, this workspace also provides capabilities that are otherwise only available inside workspaces that are backed by a Premium per capacity license. In contrast to a PPU workspace, the Premium per capacity workspace allows users (internal and guest users) to access content that have a free license, if this content is shared by a Power BI app.

 Next to that I consider the documentation of MSFT not wrong, unfortunately, the documentation is not as simple as it should be. I also second @Burningsuit arguments.

Hopefully, this adds a little bit to this discussion.

Regards,

Tom