Publish an App in Power BI without providing access to the original Data Source

[PatrickNealis]

I have Power BI Pro: I'm exploring App functionality. 

I have a current App Workspace where I've added users as members of the App Workspace. By doing so, and publishing a report using Power BI Desktop utilizing Row Level Security in the raw file, if users sign into the workspace they are only able to access data from a custom set of Dashboards and Reports depending on their security level. Likewise, the original data set does not show up under data sets and the end user cannot download it. 

However, if I publish that App and give users access to the dashboards/reports, while the Row Level Security settings still operate, the App publishes a link to the entire Raw data set. (User clicks on the "View Contnet List" link in the top right hand corner, then selects Data sets, then action: Download XLS). Obviously RLS is useless if the user can access the raw data file.

Question: Is there a way to publish an App in Power BI without providing access to the original data set?  

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @PatrickNealis

Do you have a screenshot of where it says that they can download the dataset?

When I had a look, it had the option to Analyze in Excel, which would only bring down the required data, and would still apply RLS (Row Level Security) on the dataset.

[PatrickNealis]

I just tested your solution with a colleague by limiting their RLS credentials and you are correct, the export file also limited their access to the raw data file. That solves the short term problem I was having regarding access to the data. It would be ideal if you could select to only publish the report (not the data) in an app, however knowing that RLS will translate through to the "raw data" downloadable file in the app does accomplish the need I was looking for. 

Thank you for your assistance!!!

[GilbertQ]

Glad it works for you.

The only thing that I would say is that for the visuals there always has to be the underlying data in order to render the visual.

So as long as the data is aggregated and you are using Row Level Security there would be no way for the users to relate the data back to the exact source system data.