Power BI Groups, Reports and Data Sources

[cbailiss]

Hello

A few questions about Power BI Groups that the documentation hasn't answered:

1)  Can I create a report in Power BI Desktop and publish/share that in a Power BI Group?

It seems like this might be possible by uploading the PBIX file manually into the One Drive for Business associated with the group, but that there is no capability to do this from within the Desktop tool.  Am I right/missing something?

So, it seems from the above reports that exist under groups are different instances to the reports that I publish into my Power BI Online area (i.e. they aren't and cannot be shared versions of the same instance).

If I upload a PBIX file into a group, does that still count against my personal data allowance?  I assume so, but haven't seen it documented (please feel free to point out if I have missed a support article somewhere).

2)  What data sources are supported for manual/scheduled refresh into a report that exists in a Power BI Group?  Looks like flat files stored in the groups One Drive for Business area are supported.  Based on a quick test it looks like a PBIX file uploaded manually into a Power BI Group can be refreshed by the personal gateway, so on-prem sources are supported.  I presume this has to be the personal gateway of the report creator (wouldn't work for anyone else)?

Any workarounds for the above?

Thanks

Chris

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@cbailiss I wouldn't have commented, but since @Bjoern pinged me I'll gladly throw in my two cents 🙂

1) The use of Content Packs is powerful, and you can apply what is described by Bjoern. The only caution I usually point out is that you need to make sure the group that owns the Content Pack is secure, because if the Content Pack is deleted - it will delete everything downstream. (All work made on copies of the Content Pack, etc)

2) Don't have much to add, Bjoern explains it well. If you want to learn more I would direct you here. You could also take a look at the new Enterprise Gateway if this is a larger implementation.

[Bjoern · Accepted solution]

"

Hi @cbailiss

i will try to answer your questions (which are very valid in my eyes):

1)  Can I create a report in Power BI Desktop and publish/share that in a Power BI Group?

To my knowledge this is not direclty possible, as you have to sign with your personal account within the power bi desktop application. What you could try (and @Seth_C_Bauer will for sure have another opinion ;-)) is to upload the report, create a content pack from it and "pull" the content pack into the group. By doing this, you only have to a) publish the report and b) update the content pack.

Please keep in mind that custom visuals do not work in groups at the moment. 

"2)  What data sources are supported for manual/scheduled refresh into a report that exists in a Power BI Group?  Looks like flat files stored in the groups One Drive for Business area are supported.  Based on a quick test it looks like a PBIX file uploaded manually into a Power BI Group can be refreshed by the personal gateway, so on-prem sources are supported.  I presume this has to be the personal gateway of the report creator (wouldn't work for anyone else)?"

I assume that the same data sources are applied. With SSAS Tabular connector it also works the same way. In the gateways you can specify the PBI-account which is used for publishing the data. So, as long as colleagues from your domain want to access the same source, they should not have a problem (either via group or personal account), as long as they are included in the permission/security settings of the source.

Please also see:

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-organizational-content-packs-intro...

"All group members have the same permissions to the data as the content pack creator. The one exception to this is SSAS on-prem tabular datasets. Since the reports and dashboards are connecting live to the on-prem SSAS model, the credentials of each individual group member are used to determine which data he or she can access."