PowerBI vs SSRS Licensing

[jalockha]

I have two different clients who are both asking the same question.  With the new release of SSRS, and the new PowerBI Server…it appears that users will be able to publish PowerBI reports into SSRS and SSRS Reports to PowerBI Server…

How does the licensing work?  I know for creation of the reports and publishing them will require a PowerBI Pro license…but what about consuming PowerBI reports via SSRS or SSRS Reports in PowerBI Server?  It is my understand that using PowerBI Server, view users will NOT need a license to view PowerBI reports...but what about the SSRS reports? And vice-versa?

Also, is PowerBI Report Server going to replace SSRS?

I understand the licensing from a PowerBI perspective…just don’t know how it works sharing PowerBI within SSRS and SSRS within PowerBI.

Hope that makes since.

[DeepikaSaxena]

Just checking further on your issue : If we recommend Power BI premium to our client who has his own ERP in a non Sql server database, does he need to buy SSRS as well ? Power BI Premium has Report Server on premise - but I is that same as SSRS ? Also although Power BI is more on visualization, will the basic reporting functionality on underlying data be available via Report server e.g. using report designer to create reports, grouping, sorting, export and so on.  I am still trying to figure out if we need SSRS AND Report server or just Report Server suffices in above scenario. 

[v-ljerr-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @jalockha,

Summary of the Power BI Integration and Pin Process

This sections summarizes the basic steps and technologies involved when you integrate your report server with Power BI and pin a report item to a dashboard.

Integrate:

1. In Configuration manager, when you select the Register with Power BI button, you will be prompted to sign in to Azure Active Directory.

2. The Power BI Client App is registered with your managed Tenant.

3. Your managed tenant within Azure Active Directory is where the Power BI Client app is created.

4. The registration includes a redirect URL(s) that are used when users sign in from the report server. The App ID and URLS are saved to the ReportServer database. The redirect URL is used during authentication calls to Azure so that the call can return to the report server. For example, when users sign in or pin items to a dashboard..

5. The App ID and URLS are displayed in Configuration Manager.

   

   When a user pins a report item to a dashboard:

6. Users preview reports in the Reporting Services web portal and the first time they click to pin a report item from the web portal.

7. They will be redirected to the Azure AD sign-in page. They can also sign in from the web portal My Settings page. When users sign in to the Azure managed tenant, a relationship is established between their Azure account and the Reporting Services permissions. For more information, see My Settings for Power BI Integration (web portal).

8. A user security token is returned to the report server.

9. The user security token is saved to the ReportServer database.

10. A list of groups, and dashboards, the user has access to are retrieved from the Power BI service. The user selects the destination group, and dashboard, and the configure how often they want the data refreshed on the Power BI tile.

11. The report item is pinned to the dashboard.

12. A Reporting Services subscription is created to manage the scheduled refresh of the report item to the dashboard tile. The subscription uses the security token that was created when the user signed in.

    NOTE: The token is good for 90 days, after which users need to sign in again to create a new user token. When the token is expired, the pinned tiles will still be displayed on the dashboard but the data will no longer be refreshed. The Reporting Services subscriptions used for the pinned items will error until a new user token is created. See My Settings for Power BI Integration (web portal). for more information.

The second time a user pins an item, the steps 1-4 are skipped and instead the App id and URLS are retrieved from the ReportServer database and the flow continues with step 5.

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For more details about Power BI and SSRS Report Server Integration, you can refer to this article. 

Regards