Licensing external users for PowerBI Premium

[Anonymous]

So I understand the Azure B2B licensing works, on a good faith scenario right now, as no license actually gets assigned to the external users. We just need to make sure that we have enough licenses in the 5:1 ratio. Our issue is sending invites to users who are external and require a premium PowerBI license to do the things we want to allow them to do. Currently a lot of new users get a 60 trial license assigned for premium features. I have read the document below regarding how we license them but how do we know: 1. When an external user has consumed a trial license, so that we can assign them a pro license afterwards? 2. When an external user is consuming their own PowerBI Premium license and not one we have assigned to them? 3. We have clients who need to consume and we want a seamless experience and to be confident the access we grant them is given and not license restricted. 4. Some external users will have their own license and we don't want to rely on them telling us as it affects what we charge them. any help appreciated as this has been passed around MS support forums! "The guest user must have the proper licensing in place to view the content that was shared. There are three options to accomplish this: use Power BI Premium; assign a Power BI Pro license; or use the guest's Power BI Pro license. When using the Allow external guest users to edit and manage content in the organization feature, guest users contributing content to workspaces or sharing content with others require a Power BI Pro license.”

[sananthv]

When you say "Our issue is sending invites to users who are external and require a premium PowerBI license to do the things we want to allow them to do" what do you mean by this? Share a dashboard and apps?

Here is what I can answer based on what you have written. I am sharing my understanding of the licensing and appreciate if anyone can correct me if I am wrong.

If you have power BI premium, you enable it in a workspace (as it is capacity based).  You can share PBI dashboards and PBI apps to both internal and external users to collaborate from theat workspace (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-expands-access-to-intelligence-for-external-guest-...). For the consumers of the dashboards and reports, either internal and external users of this, the license they have does not matter (weather they have free, pro or premium). The basic is a free power bi license. If you want to share the workspace or content pack then they should be a trusted in AAD (I think).

Now to your questions.

1. When an external user has consumed a trial license, so that we can assign them a pro license afterwards?

If your users only want to consume the report, it does not matter what license they have. Power BI Pro license is for users who are authers of the reports.

2. When an external user is consuming their own PowerBI Premium license and not one we have assigned to them?

Like I said before, you assign your Power BI Premium licenses to the workspaces you want others to consume and all users to whom you share the dashboards and apps will have access to it and what license they have is irrelevant. 

3. We have clients who need to consume and we want a seamless experience and to be confident the access we grant them is given and not license restricted.

I can assure you that if you have Power BI Premium and want to share the dashboards and apps you will have a seemless experience if the external organisation also has AAD.

4. Some external users will have their own license and we don't want to rely on them telling us as it affects what we charge them. Any help appreciated as this has been passed around MS support forums! 

As indicated above, Power BI premium is based on capacity and is assigned to a workspace. It will not effect what microsoft licensing schemes they have for Power BI. What you charge as and ISV is in addition to all that.

Hope this helps. This is just my understanding. If I am wrong, don't worry, Microsoft support will definitely correct me 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi

Thanks for your reply I have mistyped this, we have Power BI Pro not Premium which means the licences so matter.

1. When an external user has consumed a trial license, so that we can assign them a pro license afterwards?

If your users only want to consume the report, it does not matter what license they have. Power BI Pro license is for users who are authers of the reports. Yes we want them to author not just consume

2. When an external user is consuming their own PowerBI Premium license and not one we have assigned to them?

Like I said before, you assign your Power BI Premium licenses to the workspaces you want others to consume and all users to whom you share the dashboards and apps will have access to it and what license they have is irrelevant. 

We are using Pro licenses so to allow other external users to author we need to assign them licenses hence the question

3. We have clients who need to consume and we want a seamless experience and to be confident the access we grant them is given and not license restricted.

I can assure you that if you have Power BI Premium and want to share the dashboards and apps you will have a seemless experience if the external organisation also has AAD. - the Power BI Pro license assignment affects their capabilities though

4. Some external users will have their own license and we don't want to rely on them telling us as it affects what we charge them. Any help appreciated as this has been passed around MS support forums! 

As indicated above, Power BI premium is based on capacity and is assigned to a workspace. It will not effect what microsoft licensing schemes they have for Power BI. What you charge as and ISV is in addition to all that. We use Pro sorry for the confusion

[sananthv]

You have a PBI Pro account. You you have an external domain tursted through AAD. You create a workspace and share it with the external organsiation. For external users to view the workspace, yes, they need to have PBO Pro license (governed by the lincensing that external organisation has with Microsoft). Because even if the external organisation has Power BI Premium, I have not tested if you could assign that a Premium capacity by that external user. If we can then you are in luck. Appreciate if someone can advise on this. Either way as an organisation, you charge for sharing the workspace you have created with all the goodies on a monthly basis 🙂

Also, when you say external user editing reports, are you refering to the external users editing reports online (or connecting to the power BI premium dataset from desktop)  or authoring completely new reports from the desktop?

[Anonymous]

so yes we want to assign authoring rights to external users who may or may not have a PowerBI Pro license. It is there data and they can manipulate it as they desire. See here on how to assign external users a Power BI Pro License

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-azure-ad-b2b

This works if there is a 1-1 relationship but we are offering this to organisations with 2000 plus users. Now they may own 100-150 licenses but we do not know who or who doesn't have those assigned and therefore it becomes trobulesome to manage this. It leaves some users with the right access and some without. Also most new users accept the trial offer of PowerBI Pro for 60 days. So they are fine for 60 days then they lose access or their organisation gets charged when we should be supplying the license.