Power BI Free - What's the Point?

[aussie_jock]

Hi all

Yes, it's a newbie. I've done some work off and on in Power BI about a year ago and always wanted to take it further in my company. 

My plan was for a few people to write reports and display them on SharePoint for everyone else. Nice and easy. 

So, I have my content creators with Power BI Pro license. 

I then have the rest of the company with Power BI free licenses as part of their Office 365 subscription.

But when the content creators create Power BI reports and put them in SharePoint (modern) everyone one needs a Pro license just to see the report.

Am I correct in that or am I missing something. It’s all quite simple excel created reports / data 

If this is the case then what’s the point of Power BI free. You can’t do anything with it, not even read shared material. I am not going to pay $10 a month just so someone can read a report.

Is this correct?

Regards

[Thejeswar]

@aussie_jock,

Yes you need to have Power BI Pro license to view the shared content

As far as Power BI Free is concerned, it is just at the level of Power BI Desktop and in Power BI Service, you can view your own workspace which will have your own content...but not the shared items.

[aussie_jock]

Thanks for that. That's what I thought.

So to make Powe BI useful for the entire org I need to spend $10 per month per user.

That's a lot of cash for a reporting tool

[Anonymous]

Power BI Premium is the licencing solution for large scale consumers of reports.

[v-danhe-msft]

Hi @aussie_jock,

Based on your situation, I suggest you to use the "publish to web" function to embed your Power BI report to the sharepoint, it is free but you need to pay attention that when you use Publish to web, the report or visual you publish can be viewed by anyone on the Internet. There is no authentication used when viewing these reports. 
You could refer to below links:

Publish to web from Power BI

Embedding a PowerBI report inside a SharePoint page using “Publish to Web” Vs using “Embed in SP onl...

Regards,

Daniel He

 

 

 

 

[aussie_jock]

Thanks for that. I thought of that but there is information that we'd probably not want to be freely available on the Internet.

Thanks and Regards

Richard

[Thejeswar]

@aussie_jock,

I think there is a workaround to some extent.

Once you publish to Web when you don't have PRO licensed users, the report will be available for everyone.

But there is something you can do to stop this from being open to everyone.

Say that you are publishing to a website location which is restricted to your company. By this means the report access can be limited to all the employees of your company.

Now you should define security in the Website based on the user login such that this specific location where the report is published should be visible for those who have the right to access it.

In this way, you can restrict access at the level of the report. But RLS is not possible without procuring Pro license.

[Anonymous]

@Thejeswar thats now how publish to the web works.  The URL is created by Microsoft is therefore discoverable by all of the internet.  Yes you could reduce the risk by only disclosing the URL internally, but that will not stop this URL from being shared by individuals or if it is discovered by bots.

[Thejeswar]

@Anonymous,

Thanks for the info. I was not aware of this URL being discoverable even when published internally

[v-danhe-msft]

Hi @Thejeswar,

Could you please tell me if your problem has been solved? If it is, could you please mark the helpful replies as Answered?

Regards,

Daniel He

[Thejeswar]

Hi @v-danhe-msft,

I don't think It's my question to accept as solution!!

[Denismc]

An old thread, but it seems any user viewing the reports or app needs  a pro licence, I have a pro licence in a small company and without getting everyone a pro licence, they can't view the reports!!! Any help on this would be very much appreciated. They can't view on sharepoint either!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-how-to-collaborate-distribute-dashboards-reports

Distribute insights in an app

Say you want to distribute your dashboard to a broad audience in your organization. You and your coworkers have created a workspace, then created and refined dashboards, reports, and datasets in the workspace. Now you select the dashboards and reports you want and publish them as an app — either to a group or to your whole organization.

Apps are easy to find and install in the Power BI service (https://powerbi.com). You can send your business users a direct link to the app, or they can search for it in AppSource. If your Power BI administrator gives you permissions, you can install an app automatically in your coworkers' Power BI accounts. Read more about publishing your apps.

After they install an app, they can view it in their browser or mobile device.

For your users to view your app, either they need to have a Power BI Pro license, too, or the app needs to be stored in a Power BI Premium capacity. Read What is Power BI Premium? for details.

You can publish apps to those outside your organization, too. They can view and interact with the app content, but can’t share it with others. Now you can create template apps deploy them to any Power BI customer.

[Denismc]

An old thread, but it seems any user viewing the reports or app needs  a pro licence, I have a pro licence in a small company and without getting everyone a pro licence, they can't view the reports!!! Any help on this would be very much appreciated. They can't view on sharepoint either!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-how-to-collaborate-distribute-dashboards-reports

Distribute insights in an app

Say you want to distribute your dashboard to a broad audience in your organization. You and your coworkers have created a workspace, then created and refined dashboards, reports, and datasets in the workspace. Now you select the dashboards and reports you want and publish them as an app — either to a group or to your whole organization.

Apps are easy to find and install in the Power BI service (https://powerbi.com). You can send your business users a direct link to the app, or they can search for it in AppSource. If your Power BI administrator gives you permissions, you can install an app automatically in your coworkers' Power BI accounts. Read more about publishing your apps.

After they install an app, they can view it in their browser or mobile device.

For your users to view your app, either they need to have a Power BI Pro license, too, or the app needs to be stored in a Power BI Premium capacity. Read What is Power BI Premium? for details.

You can publish apps to those outside your organization, too. They can view and interact with the app content, but can’t share it with others. Now you can create template apps deploy them to any Power BI customer.

[Thejeswar]

Hi @Denismc ,

As @Anonymous  said, If sharing the reports to the consumers and colloborating with them is going to be of more focus, it is better that you go for a capacity where you host the reports. If hands-on might be required for the users, that will require a Pro-license

[Anonymous]

Yep thats exactly how it works.  Licensing is all about sharing and collaboration.  Either each person needs to have a personal license (Pro), or the organisation needs to pay for dedicated capacity for the report consumers(Embeded or Premium).  Pro license is always required for a person doing the development and sharing out, premium just covers the 'consumers' of the report.

Power BI has a free component and Microsoft has drawn the line at collaboration where free becomes paid.

[v-danhe-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @aussie_jock,

If you do not want your report be freely available on the internet, I am afraid you and your colleagues have to purchase the Power BI Pro license to share reports to others.

You could refer to below link:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-how-to-collaborate-distribute-dashboards-reports#s...

Regards,

Daniel He