MS Licences (probably again)

[KealeyA]

Hi

 

I am sure this has been issue has been raised before but I can’t find any clear answer so…..

I want to use Power BI to provide so specific dashboards from SIMs data.

I know there are issues with getting the data out but initially I need to know:

 

1) what licences do I need as a creator?

2) what licences do the users need?

3) what are the cost implications of these licences?

 

We have Office 365, not sure what version, but appear to have access to the Power BI app as part of the office suite but this seems to not allow sharing making it pretty pointless for what I want.

The Microsoft website seems pretty opaque when it comes to pricing and what you might need to create and administer various data scenarios.

My logic seems to lead me towards a premium/pro licence for the creator(s) and everyone else can use their free accounts to read the data but I have read conflicting reports that imply the readers need specific, paid for, licences as well.

We have Sharepoint as a website and I have read that this can be used as a way of disseminating information but have not really investigated this fully.

 

Any advice gratefully received as I don’t want to waste too much time and money on this if it is prohibitively expensive

 

Thanks

[TechMonkey]

It has been a while since I have looked at this so please double check as I may be incorrect and it may have changed.

 

To create you do not need a license.

If you want to create dashboards to share you need a license per user that creates the dashboard. If you want to collaborate on a dashboard every person that wants to work on it needs a license. The user reading the dashboard does not need a license.

 

But remember, you only need a license to share a live, interactive dashboard or collaborate on the creation. You can export as a PDF and publish to others, you just obviously lose the ability to interact with the data.

 

Cost wise, I'm seeing £1.85 per user per month on my portal for Pro for Faculty. Not sure what difference there is between that and Premium for faculty (£3.70) though.

[KealeyA]

Thank you for this, it is sort of what I thought but couldn’t find it laid out in simple language.

If I get two licences for the managers of the dashboard, they will be the only people to edit the dashboard, then everyone else can just look at the data as they wish.

I used to use ssrs which was great for building this sort of thing but had a steep learning curve, Shane I don’t know how to integrate it into SIMs (but I am sure some clever people already have)

[GiggleKitteh]

PowerBI Pro is included in M365 A5 licences but not in M365 A3.

 

Premium provides capacity but users still need a Pro licence.

I asked about Premium user licences a while back and was told they didn't exist yet. That may have changed by now.

[KealeyA]

Thank you for this. It seems it could get very expensive very quickly. I am not sure if the school has A3 or A5 licenses. This is an odd system of licensing. What use is the free licence if it is only visible to yourself?