Report sharing

[Krisi]

Hi everyone,

I have a quesition regarding sharing reports. I have created a power bi report which at the end should be available to some colleagues, preferably without them being able to edit it. According to the information I found, sharing is only possible with a pro license or premium. We all have office business premium capacities so they should be able to access the report but when they try to do so, they always get an error message, saying they need a pro license. So I'd like to know how to solve that problem or how I have to share it so they'll be able to access it without having a pro lincense? I was also told that it is possible to share it on one drive but didn't understand yet how that is supposed to work, so if any one has tips on that as well, it'd be great.

Thank you for your help in advance.

Best Krisi

[mihart]

Hi Krisi,

Yes, your users need to either have Pro licenses or be part of the same workspace that is hosted in Premium capacity.  And, yes, you can grant your colleagues "viewer" permissions which means that they cannot edit. 

I'll try to help you, but need a bit more info:

1. Are you sharing using an app, with a direct link to the report, or are you sharing the workspace?
2. Do your colleagues have Pro licenses?
3. Do your colleagues have free licenses but access to Premium capacity?
4. Please explain this phrase "We all have office business premium capacities ".  

These articles may help:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/consumer/end-user-license

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/collaborate-share/service-share-dashboards

- Michele

[Krisi]

Hi Michele,

first of all thank you for your answer.

Well for sharing I tried both. I would have used an app probably, but in general whatever is better to use for that purpose.

My collaegues don't have pro licenses. And what I meant with premium capacity, I googled again and we have office business premium so a kind of specific version of office, but I saw now that there is also a specific power bi premium capacity, so I guess that is what is needed for sharing without pro licenses?

I also got the tip to share on one drive, but I don't really get how that is different to sharing within the power bi service online. For me sharing on one drive would either mean making the pbix file accessible to everyone or using power bi service online and sharing that link in one drive. Or are there other ways for sharing in one drive?

Best Krisi

[nickyvv · Accepted solution]

Sharing with OneDrive is not the best practice. Especially not when you don't want them to edit anything.

There's a lot included in Office Business Premium, but not Power BI unfortunately. As you mention you don't have Power BI Premium (which is a serious investment), so the only option is to have a Pro license for every user.

For sharing, I would definitely use an App in the workspace, preferably to an Azure AD-group, where the users can be assigned to that group. You can use AAD-groups in the Permissions tab of the App. But you can also start with choosing just the user-accounts. An App is always read-only, and you can decide what artifacts you want to share from the workspace.