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Anonymous
Not applicable

Enabling Self-seve and Sharing capability in the organisation

Hi 

I'd like to understand how are businesses across the world trying to encourage self-serve data analysis and reporting by business users (indivisuals outside of BI and Data Team) at the same time enable them to share reports via PBI Service.

 

Our scenario -

  • We've a P1 PBI Premium node.
  • We've limited Pro licensces. Limited to BI/Data teams only.
  • We've multiple on prem data sources ranging from central Oracle DWH to SSAS cubes.
  • We've certified reports off these source developed by my BI team sitting on Workspaces on Service. We've name them as Sales Prod. when in development, we publish them to Sales UAT.
  • We've seen an increase in business users from Marketing, Sales etc asking on how to share the reports they have developed using Cubes and Oracle.
  • We'd not like them buy Pro licences, as that is not approved cost. And will create a mess of our PBI environment.
  • We want to encourage them on doing self-serve, but we dont want to discourage them by saying it cant be published or shared as reports are not certified or we cant buy Pro licences.

How are you guys encouraging business users to self-serve at the same time share? And how do we keep their work separated with BI's certified organisational-wide reports and dashboards?

 

Hope I've been able to explain. Please ask questions if you need clarification.

 

PS: I checked the forums, the below is the closest I could find. However, the solution doesnot answer to my specific concern.

 

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Power-BI-Workspace-Management-Enterprise-Level-Best-Practic...

Thank you

2 REPLIES 2
nickyvv
Community Champion
Community Champion

I can honestly say we're facing much of the same problems.

This is our setup and issues we are facing:

  • We started with 1 node, but scaled out with another one this summer
  • In the beginning of this year we've gone back from 750 to 80 pro licenses, we now have around 150
  • We have Self-Service BI (SSBI) teams in the business lines (Risk, Finance, HR, etc) that create the reports
  • We have some promoted datasets, but those are not widely implemented at this time
  • We have some naming conventions set up, e.g. for gateways and workspaces.
  • We use workspaces for Admins and Members which have a pro license
    • We have AD-groups that are given a role in the workspace. In that way we only have to add users to the AD-groups
  • Our end users have access to the content via the App (and sometimes now with the Viewer role in the workspace) with the workspace being in Premium
  • We have several in-house training options, like Dashboard in an hour/day. Some people attending that training also want to start building reports, so we (usually) provide them with a pro license afterwards
  • We have a workflow set up within our ticketing system to approve and create workspaces

 

Things we would like to do:

  • Monitor pro licenses for use
  • Refresh datasets with PowerShell, although it is also possible with Flow now
  • Better (Premium) logging/monitoring
  • We still have a few "old" workspaces and sometimes run into issues with them. Today e.g. I wanted to assign the Viewer role to an AD-group, but that's not possible on an old workspace
  • Make more use of shared datasets and or dataflows

So to come back to some of your questions:

- I think applying a template to the reports is a good idea, that way end users always know what they are looking atBronze, Silver and Gold templatesBronze, Silver and Gold templates

- We also struggle with the pro licenses. We now have way more then we first expected, but we do not want to hinder the business (too much). Premium is not only a cost decision, it also brings about new (Premium only) features.


Please let me know if you have any questions or want any clarifications.



Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Blog: nickyvv.com | @NickyvV


Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @nickyvv 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I can see we are not alone. 🙂

 

The only difference I can see with your scenario to mine is that you've some sort of psuedo BI teams within functional areas. We dont. We have a central BI team of 8 people supporting 1600 + employees. 1 per 200. 🙂

Rest every conundrum is the same. 

 

Your idea on templates were discussed within my team, however it was quickly dismissed because not every cowboy in the business will now that a template exists. And the BI team will not know that there is a cowboy waiting to create his flashy report on PBI so lets send the template. The cowboy can spend weeks making it flashy, only to know that BI team will reject as it is not on a template.

 

I think we are just going to wing it as it comes. I'll keep reading.

 

Thank you for taking time to reply.

 

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