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Anonymous
Not applicable

Self Service BI in APP or Workspace

Dear Community

 

We are looking into ways to implement PowerBI in our organisation.

 

For plain distribution of reports PowerBI does a great jojb and we have fun creating the reports and sharing them with a broad audience of users in a premium Capacity.

 

However, we want to enable Self Service BI. We come from a System that had a Pentaho Client running on top, which gave users access to cubes to generate and save their own reports. They would be refreshed according to a schedule. We want to keep that possibility.

I have found two ways of doing so:

 

Create a dedicated APP Workspace for Self Service BI and add the premium users to it as Admins.
Members do not see Datasets, hence they cannot do an analysis in the service.
Drawback: Everyone is an admin in that workspace, essentially able to do anything except for publishing/updatingan APP.

Let Users install PowerBI Desktop and connect to the PowerBI Service.
Works well and offers all capabilities of PowerBI
Drawback: It requires a native installation (which is a potential problem for us since we use ThinClients in some offices).

 

Is there a way to publish Datasets to an APP and enable analysis on them?
Is there a way to enable Dataset Anaylsis in an APP Workspace without making Users Admins?

Maybe there are other ways to solve this problem?

 

Thanks a lot for your help

Best regards

airfreighter

 

 

 

7 REPLIES 7

@Anonymous The Premium license is an Add-on to the Pro license. You still need a Pro license for users who need to share content with others. From my understanding you shouldn't be able to add a Free user to an App Workspace... If you can, they shouldn't be able to access it from a licensing perspective. To answer your questions specifically:

Is there a way to publish Datasets to an APP and enable analysis on them? Currently Apps are read only.
Is there a way to enable Dataset Anaylsis in an APP Workspace without making Users Admins? This shouldn't work for users who don't have a Pro license.

Maybe there are other ways to solve this problem? With licensing for App Workspace.

Depending on datasources, you could push to a supported datasource connection in the Service -Azure SQL DB or Warehouse.

Alternatively, you could deploy your dataset to a OneDrive or SharePoint Team site and have them pull the dataset from there. But in both these cases building visuals is all they could do.

True self service BI will require the Desktop as it is required to do anything in the model/add calculations/etc.

You could create a Power BI Template with the connection to the datasource. Each user would need permissions to access it, but then they could publish that dataset to their personal workspace and build reports

Those are the only options I can think of atm.


Looking for more Power BI tips, tricks & tools? Check out PowerBI.tips the site I co-own with Mike Carlo. Also, if you are near SE WI? Join our PUG Milwaukee Brew City PUG
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @Seth_C_Bauer

 

Thanks a lot for your extensive reply.

 

In essence, free users that are using a premium capacity through APPS won't have access to the APP Workspace, unless they are in possesion of a Pro License. Am I getting this right?

 

Maybe there are other ways to solve this problem? With licensing for App Workspace.

 

What do you mean by that exactly? Giving users the Pro License?

 

Building visuals (and exporting raw data) would be the only thing we want to enable, True Self Service BI is something we want to administer thorugh Super Users in due time.

 

Keen on learning more on this and thanks a lot in advance!

 

 

 

@Anonymous

In essence, free users that are using a premium capacity through APPS won't have access to the APP Workspace, unless they are in possesion of a Pro License. Am I getting this right? - Correct

 

 

"Maybe there are other ways to solve this problem? With licensing for App Workspace." 

What do you mean by that exactly? Giving users the Pro License? - Yes, just re-iterating the above statement I madein the original post.

 

The overall issue revolves around sharing. Converting the "free user" to someone who needs app workspace permission or the ability to share content requires a Pro license. My recommendations in the original post sort of dive into other ways those free users could access a datasource to build their own reports, but they can't share those without a Pro. Premium is great for users who need only "read" access, the minute a user needs more it typically falls into the need for the Pro license.

End users could use the Natural Language Q&A feature to visualize the data in different ways from the dashboard, but, again, not exactly what your looking for.

 


Looking for more Power BI tips, tricks & tools? Check out PowerBI.tips the site I co-own with Mike Carlo. Also, if you are near SE WI? Join our PUG Milwaukee Brew City PUG
Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks a lot @Seth_C_Bauer!

 

I think I have a clear view now.

 

Converting the "free user" to someone who needs app workspace permission or the ability to share content requires a Pro license. Good thing is that we don't want them to be able to share their created content (reports etc.). It is sufficient if a Free User can already connect to a Dataset that is shared within a Content Pack to create his own reports and save it in their personal workspace. We want to allow the sharing of those created reports thorugh super users with a pro License at a later stage. But until then, the read-only access is sufficient as it seems.

 

I will post an update once I have tested the discussed setup.

 

Again, your help was much appreciated

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hi @Seth_C_Bauer

 

I finally was able to test my scenario. I thought about publishing a content pack with a blank report for free users to access. After a local copy creation this works fine, but not for users without Pro I figured.

 

This probably comes down to the fact that the content pack is not shared in the premium capacity. Free users can only consume what was shared in that premium capacity.

 

Is there any way to nest the content pack into the premium capacity so that a free user can create a local copy of the dataset in his personal workspace? (it refreshes when the original dataset is refreshed)

Thanks again and best regards

@Anonymous Not that I'm aware of. The only method for sharing in premium is via Apps. Additionally, Apps is the new solution that will eventually replace Content Packs altogether from my understanding. I believe Content Packs are on the road to be deprecated, so i wouldn't invest a ton of time in building a solution around them.

I'm personally not a fan of that sharing method, to many opportunities for major error.


Looking for more Power BI tips, tricks & tools? Check out PowerBI.tips the site I co-own with Mike Carlo. Also, if you are near SE WI? Join our PUG Milwaukee Brew City PUG
Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks for the reply @Seth_C_Bauer

 

Yeah, I have the same impression and heard that this is on their roadmap. I hope they will include some kind of Self Service BI in APPS sometime soon.

 

As most of our users rely on cloud-based applications, a local installation of PowerBI Desktop for them to connect to a dataset is not a solution we are striving for. Especially not for end users who hardly know the tool.

I will try and get some more information.

 

 

 

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