Requiring Parameter to be Entered Upon Opening Report

[Anonymous]

Hey Everyone,

Is it possible to require an end user to enter a paramter into Power Query when the open the file in Power BI service? I know there is the option to make a parameter Required but I want it to actually prompt the user to enter the parameter when they open the report as opposed to going with the default value until you go in and manually change the parameter.

The use case is as follows:

I work at a CPA firm. We have designed a dashboard to allow tax analysts through managers to see how they are performing in several categories (time to complete a tax return, number of tax returns completed, etc.). However, we do not want everyone to be able to see their peers' dashboards. I am trying to avoid making 200+ individual dashboards to maintain for each individual and I thought if we could require them to enter a username/ password (which is listed as a column in the database), then we can eliminate their ability to see anyone else's information by only pulling in the data connected to that username/ password.  

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

No, you cannot do that in Power Query (with the exception of templates https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-templates but only on the desktop)

What's your reason for not using RLS in this scenario?

[Anonymous]

My reason = I had no idea it existed haha RLS seems perfect. Thanks a lot @lbendlin!

I don't suppose RLS can be used  in a report Published to the Web can it? Would be great if we could expand this to some folks that don't actually have Power BI Pro Licenses (but do have O365). I have a similar use case for one of my clients who are not ready to get everyone in their organization a license.