Need guidance about Power BI on O365 licensed Products and worflow to make Infrastructure decisions

[BBIUser]

Hi,

My company has a Power BI O365 version which means we have Power BI Pro license and the Power BI tool is very new to us.

1) We have created reports in Free Desktop version. I know that we need Power BI Service to share/publish the reports and dashboards within the organization. Since we have O365, do we still need Power BI Service for publishing/sharing?

2) This is related to Power BI Report Server.

Currently, we have 'Reporting Services' Report Manager 2016 in testing phase.

Is there a way we can use this report manger to publish the Power BI reports/dashboards in here? (without Power BI Services). What is the right approach for this?

I tried reading most of the documents available from the internet but no clear solutions to what I am looking for. Any input will be valuable for me. Thanks!

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

Yes, you still need a Pro license to share and for people to view those shared reports. If you have an E5 license (Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5) then you already have the Pro license for Power BI. This is assuming you do not have Power BI Premium and then it is a little different, not everyone needs Pro.

Power BI Report Server is a separate instance of SSRS that includes the Power BI integration.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

Yes, you still need a Pro license to share and for people to view those shared reports. If you have an E5 license (Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5) then you already have the Pro license for Power BI. This is assuming you do not have Power BI Premium and then it is a little different, not everyone needs Pro.

Power BI Report Server is a separate instance of SSRS that includes the Power BI integration.

[BBIUser]

Thanks for posting back. I am posting 2 different questions here again -

1) Yes, we have Office 365 E5 license.

So when you mention "you still need a Pro license to share and for people to view those shared reports. If you have an E5 license (Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5) then you already have the Pro license for Power BI"

Does that mean we have Power BI Service within Office 365 E5 license or does that mean I can share reports within organization without Power BI Service?

2) My question for this one is "Currently, we have 'Reporting Services' Report Manager 2016 in testing phase." Assume, we have the installed the Power BI here.

Can I publish the reports in this report manager and share it within organization?

[v-shex-msft · Accepted solution]

HI @BBIUser,

#1,

No, 'Office 365 E5' license contains power bi pro license, it means you not need to pay for power bi pro license. For share contents, you and receivers still need power bi account and license.( you can use your office 365 account to sign up power bi and ask admin to assign license)

Administering Power BI in your organization

#2.

If you mean use Power bi Report Server to publish report to power bi, you can refer to below link:

Quickstart: Create a Power BI report for Power BI Report Server

If you mean SSRS publish to power bi, please take a look at following link:

How to migrate SSRS reports to Power BI and create new reports?

Regards,
Xiaoxin Sheng

[BBIUser]

Thanks and appreciate your valuable inputs Xiaoxin.