Licensing and Publishing/Sharing

[Anonymous]

Hello -

Looking for details around licensing with Power BI Pro. At my organization, we have a certain number of users who already have the Pro License and are able to publish reports and dashboards. However, when shared, they can only be viewed by others who have Pro licenses, but can't be shared with people who just want to view them in Desktop. Do we need additional configurations so that a user base that would only view reports and dashboards are able to do so without needing or requiring a Pro License?

Thanks for any feedback/direction.

-Kyle

[v-lili6-msft · Accepted solution]

hi, @Anonymous 

You could refer to this post which I have solved:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Securely-share-report-with-non-pro-users/m-p/657917#M65149

In power bi service

For normal, if you want to share a private report to others, you and others both need the Pro license.
If you have purchased Premium and add your content to Premium, then when you share the content, the receiver could be free user.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-free-vs-pro
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-premium

Another way, you could publish report to web, then anyone could access it.

But When you use Publish to web, the report or visual you publish can be viewed by anyone on the Internet. There is no authentication used when viewing these reports. Only use Publish to web with reports and data that the anyone on the Internet (unauthenticated members of the public) should be able to see. This includes detail level data that is aggregated in your reports. Before publishing this report, ensure you have the right to share the data and visualizations publicly. Do not publish confidential or proprietary information. If in doubt, check your organization's policies before publishing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-publish-to-web

and if you want to share with people who just want to view them in Desktop, you could just download the pbix file and then share it by other ways, for example: as an email attachment ,etc.

By the way, power bi desktop is a development tool for report and dashboard, so all the underlying data and underlying formula could be seen in it.

Best Regards,
Lin

[v-lili6-msft · Accepted solution]

hi, @Anonymous 

You could refer to this post which I have solved:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Securely-share-report-with-non-pro-users/m-p/657917#M65149

In power bi service

For normal, if you want to share a private report to others, you and others both need the Pro license.
If you have purchased Premium and add your content to Premium, then when you share the content, the receiver could be free user.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-free-vs-pro
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-premium

Another way, you could publish report to web, then anyone could access it.

But When you use Publish to web, the report or visual you publish can be viewed by anyone on the Internet. There is no authentication used when viewing these reports. Only use Publish to web with reports and data that the anyone on the Internet (unauthenticated members of the public) should be able to see. This includes detail level data that is aggregated in your reports. Before publishing this report, ensure you have the right to share the data and visualizations publicly. Do not publish confidential or proprietary information. If in doubt, check your organization's policies before publishing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-publish-to-web

and if you want to share with people who just want to view them in Desktop, you could just download the pbix file and then share it by other ways, for example: as an email attachment ,etc.

By the way, power bi desktop is a development tool for report and dashboard, so all the underlying data and underlying formula could be seen in it.

Best Regards,
Lin

[Anonymous]

Great! Thank you for your reply. This has been very helpful.

[v-lili6-msft · Accepted solution]

hi, @Anonymous 

Could you please tell me if your problem has been solved? If it is, could you please mark the helpful replies as Answered?

Best Regards,

Lin