Achieve "separation of duties" with Power BI?

[lewisveale]

Hello

I need to meet a "separation of duties" requirement, whereby no single user has permission to export a report to Excel, and run off with the data. 

I know about the sensitivity labels and DLP features of Power BI, but these don't prevent the above scenario.

I have thought about doing this with Power Automate, and have posted elsewhere for help with that. But is there a way to achieve this entirely within Power BI?

For example, can I configure a Power BI report so that one user can "request" an export to Excel, which another user has to "approve"? Or are there any other ways to achieve this?

Thanks in advance.

[collinq]

Hi @lewisveale ,

Are you trying to STOP the action from happening?  If so, you will be able to stop any export by going into the Admin screen and turning off that capability.

If you are trying to allow people to export to Excel but only in certain cases I don't think you can do anything inside of Power BI itself.  And, any sort of Power Automate solution would have to turn on/off the permission to export.  You might be best off of having a certain person be the "Can export to Excel" person that people have to contact - that is not efficient and I sure wouldn't want to be that person but there is no nuanced, individual user permission settings for Exporting.

[lewisveale]

Thanks @collinq - this is kinda what I thought, sadly.

I have found the tenant-level settings where you can turn exporting off. And I have also found that you can set an "except for user group", which does have permission to export. But this still means that someone in that group will be able to export with no-one else knowing about it.

I'll wait and see if anyone else has any "left field" ideas to throw into the mix 😄 

[v-easonf-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi, @lewisveale 

Please refer to Export the data that was used to create a visualization.

In PowerBI, the following three aspects can be considered to limit exporting data.

 Admin tenant settings
 Row level security
 Data protection

If they don't work for you, you might consider submitting your needs on the PowerBI Ideas Forum.

If there are enough votes, the product team will evaluate and consider it.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Eason