Restricting views for users

[wilson_smyth]

I was given a scenario today and am unsure if its even possible in powerbi, but would appreciate some expert views.

We have a number of reports that compare stores over years. We see the top 10, bottom 10 and a ranking table to show where each store ranks against the rest. This data is only available to people in head office.

The request is to make this data available to individual store managers, but in a way that the managers cannot see names of other stores.

They will see if they are in the top 10 or bottom 10 stores, they will see their rank, but all other stores will have their name obscured.

My idea is to use the store managers login as a parameter, and in the database, have thier login mapped to the store they can see. Im still not sure how i can obscure the names of the other stores while still showing the data.

I hope that is clear and makes sense, i dont have sample data or a model yet but will try to mock something up.

Appreciate any help and expertise you can provide.

Thanks,

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @wilson_smyth,

For your scenario, I think dynamic rls will be suitable for your requirement:

Power BI – Dynamic Row Level Security – Tips to get it working!

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

[wilson_smyth]

Thanks but i dont think RLS is the answer.

RLS is about preventing visibility to rows, not obfuscating/anonymousing them.

e.g.

Without rls i can see:

store 1: 234000

store 2: 142300

store 3: 34589

with rls and a filter on all except store 1, all i will see is 

store 1: 234000

What i am looking for is to be able to see the store i manage, adn all the rest of the data but just the store name anonymised:

store 1:                       234000

anonymous store a: 142300

anonymous store b: 23589

in this scenario, store 1 owner can see his store, can see where he/she rates in comparison to the other stores but without being able to see which stores are ahead or behind.

[Sunkari]

Yes RLS will not work in this scenario. You need a masking kind of functionality. Try the dynamic masking approach and share your results.

http://biinsight.com/power-bi-desktop-query-parameters-part2-dynamic-data-masking-and-query-paramete...

[wilson_smyth]

That is very cool, thanks for the heads up!

SQL 2016 isnt an option at present however so DMM is not a technology i can use.

I'll have a think about how to do this with a mapping table and the dax username function.

Il update if/when i have anything.

thanks for the help

[JohanT]

Hi,

did you ever find a solution to this problem? I'm having the exact same issue at the moment... @wilson_smyth 

[MFelix]

Hi @wilson_smyth,

This is.possible with row level.security that accordingly to the filters you set up the information is sliced.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-admin-rls/

Regards,
Mfelix

[wilson_smyth]

I had a look at row level security but it doesnt fit the scenario. rls dictates what i can and cant see. if a filter is set up, then there will be data missing from the report.

I cant have any data missing from the report, but i want the legends and axis labels obfuscated so that a particular user can only see which store is his, and the rest although revenue, counts etc are visible, the store names are not.