Sharing Power BI reports

[BA1503]

Hi - I hope someone can help.

I work for a non for profit organisation with up to 200 employees, and a business requirement is set to do analytics and reporting in Power BI. I have a few questions with regards to licensing and sharing Power BI reports. Currently all end users and developers (report writters) have a pro license, so this must be up to 30 users out of 200. If we choose to deploy power bi licenses to everyone in the company that would be 200 pro licenses for each end user for them to access the reports created by the developers. We are also deploying Office 365 E3 within the organisation which includes apps such as Power BI, Teams, Sharepoint and so on. 

Can I as a developer, embed the Power BI reports into Sharepoint which is included in O365 and share these reports with end users without having the organisation spend more money on pro licenses? 

Does the end user still need a pro license if the report is embedded into sharepoint which we are already paying for?

Is there any other way to share power bi reports within the organisation without purchasing individual pro licenses and power bi premium? 

I've had a look at Power BI premium however this is out of the company's budget. I've had a look at Power BI Embedded with Azure which uses a 'Pay as you use' system. I have looked into Power BI reporting server too, however that means we either need Premium or SQL Server Enterprise Edition. 

Thanks in advance. 

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@BA1503 Licensing! Fun topic 🙂 

One of the things that fixes this issue automatically is if you can get the org to purchase the O365 E5 license, this pain goes away. All E5 licenses include a Pro license. E3, does not, so all your follow up questions would still be relevant.

Can I as a developer, embed the Power BI reports into Sharepoint which is included in O365 and share these reports with end users without having the organisation spend more money on pro licenses? 

Does the end user still need a pro license if the report is embedded into sharepoint which we are already paying for?

Yes, or you need an embedded license. A or EM sku will work.

Is there any other way to share power bi reports within the organisation without purchasing individual pro licenses and power bi premium? 

"Within the Organization" = Using the Power BI Service itself to share. The answer here is "No"

I've had a look at Power BI premium however this is out of the company's budget. I've had a look at Power BI Embedded with Azure which uses a 'Pay as you use' system. I have looked into Power BI reporting server too, however that means we either need Premium or SQL Server Enterprise Edition. 

You can likely get a long way using the A1 sku to embed the reports, SharePoint is one of those options, you just wouldn't be able to share directly in the Service as that would require the end user to have a license or bump to a Premium P1

Last Note; Being a non-profit, I would reach out to your local MSFT rep - there may be special pricing that is available to you.