Unable to connect to Power BI Datasets

[Anonymous]

Hello,

We'd like to let some key users leverage data by publishing Power BI Datasets that others could consume.

The problem is that the users that want to consume those datasets get an error message when trying to connect to the Power BI Datasets because they don't have the rights to "Export Data" from the Power BI Service. (this setting is only enabled for specific security groups: IT, Finance & the Corporate Reporting team)

This right we don't want to grant them because otherwise it would allow them to scrap the .pbix files that are published on the platform and create their own versions of some corporate reports.

Is there a way to allow the consumption of Power BI Datasets without allowing the download of .pbix files?

See screenshots to illustrate.

THanks in advance for your help,

[v-lili6-msft]

hi  @Anonymous 

When you disable the export data, you could not live connection to dataset in power bi desktop any more. But you could create the report use this dataset in power bi service, the difference is that you could not create measure and use theme in the new report.

Regards,

Lin

[KBO]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I guess you could build a report on this dataset and only allow your end-user to use this file. So they wont be able to download this as .pbix.

But than the must build this report in Power BI Service ...I don't know If this is really comfortable?

Best,

Kathrin

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[Anonymous]

Hello @KBO ,

Thanks for the suggestion it could work if we only have a small number of datasets but in this case we want to let the key users be autonomous with how many datasets they publish and to whom they share them.

Some datasets will have a SSAS Cube as source, some will have an excel spreadsheet others will have CSV or web-scrapping sources. We want to let those key users deal with the complexity of getting data to a clean dataset and then let them share that cleaned-up dataset with other colleagues. 

At some point we'd like to certify some of those datasets as explained here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-datasets-certify

What does not make much sense is the message the End Users get when they try to connect to a Dataset that was published by our Key Users:

So if I summarize, if you want to enforce some level of governance by allowing some users to publish re-usable datasets to a broader audience, you have to allow the broader audience to "Export Data" hence using the "Download .pbix file" hence taking the risk of creating alternative data silos in the organization.

It would be much better to remove that requirement to enable "Export Data" so we can use Datasets WHILE preventing our users from downloading the .pbix sources at the same time.

Or maybe there's something I don't get? But at first sight it seems contradictory : "you want reusability of datasets? Ok but sacrifice governance then."

Best,