Power BI Licensing for Viewer Only Roles

[smarties11]

Hi All,

 

I was wondering if anyone could help me with Power BI licensing?

 

A member of staff here has produced various dashboard in Power BI, which they would like to now share with staff. This had been working fine, however now the staff premium licenses have run out, it is asking them to upgrade their license.

 

I did some research online, and what I was reading suggested that if the dashboards are published via Teams or SharePoint, then users assigned a 'viewer only' role would be able to see the dashboard without a pro or premium license. However, in testing this doesn't work - they are still asked to upgrade.

 

Then, I read that the dashboards need to be published into a workspace configured in PPU (premium per user) mode - we did this, but again, users are still prompted to upgrade.

 

We're now thinking, based on another article, that the workspace needs to be in premium capacity mode - however this is very expensive.

 

So....

 

Is there a way to publish the Power BI dashboards, for staff to consume data (but not edit) in a viewer only role, without them having a pro license? At the moment it seems our only options are to buy Pro licenses for staff, or to purchase premium capacity.

 

EDIT: Just to add, we are licensed on the A3 plan.

 

Thanks :-)

Edited February 5, 2024 by smarties11

[Ditto]

Topical for me at this stage, as I'm starting to use Power BI more and looking to roll out report sharing too. As ever, getting to grips with snd understanding MS licensing is not easy!

 

What has been explained to me, it there is Power BI desktop, Power BI Pro, and Power BI services. Services and Premium might be synonymous, but I don't really know. I and all colleagues have access to Power BI desktop, but you each user might need to register to it on first use. I understood Pro supported sharing, but I have found sharing a report with a colleague works fine - perhaps Pro supports sharing outside of the domain, but I think it would only be necessary for the report writer. My understanding is Premium is for very large organisations so I haven't really looked in to that.

 

I have also tasked our outsourced IT company for details - a week later I still have no more details. I'm believe Pro is around £10 per user per month, but it is suggested a Not-For-Profit version is £3.

 

I'd be delighted if someone can step in and paint a clear picture of how things Power BI really stand.

[ABR82]

I'd set up some really nice stuff with powerbi years ago, it was (I modestly declare) excellent stuff with some great insights and useful features. It looked great, it was easy to use for staff. We used the free desktop client for staff to access a shared folder where the reports lived, to which only I could write and they had read only access to stop them from knackering everything. SIMS reports scheduled to run via a batch file and dumped into a reporting folder regularly as data source.

 

So a free powerbi solution. Sadly the desktop client always wished to update, but if a client was not on the same version as the main one it wouldn't open the reports, and it opened incredibly slowly on any of our machines, and got worse with each update or new release. For some staff it took over 10 minutes to open the desktop client (we timed it). Once open it would run snappily, but nobody uses a product that basically hangs your machine for 10 minutes when you double click it. Our machines were more than capable - intel i5 with 8Gb RAM. It essentially became unusable.

We bought 3 trial licenses to play with - if I published the reports to the powerbi web service, I could open them on my phone in under 30 seconds with full viewing functionality. But people had to have a full fat PowerBI license in order to view them, unless we paid some daft amount (was it over £5k?) for the big corporate license which would allow us to publish online for anyone. We tried publishing the dashboards through teams, but viewing it still needed a PowerBI license. The quote we had back then was that it would cost a lot per user per year, and when we started looking at our list of people who would need access (the dashboard gave attendance, demographic, current behaviour, past 3 year behavioural trends, achievement and suspension data with lots of lovely graphs, tables and graphics with filter buttons so anyone could get essentially anything they wanted with an interface that was universally understood) you begin with SLT, then Heads of Year, then behaviour workers, student support workers, Heads of Department, SEN staff then the prices became thousands.

 

Unfortunately due to the cost of licensing we abandoned all that reporting.

 

Incredibly sad as the data and reporting was better by miles than anything built in to any MIS, it was really useful, live data, and it was quite fun to make. But the price was utterly prohibitive and the free version desktop workaround unusable.

 

This was pre-covid, so perhaps the terms, prices and types of license have changed now. For a couple of years it worked really nicely though.

[dhicks]

We used the free desktop client for staff to access a shared folder where the reports lived, to which only I could write and they had read only access to stop them from knackering everything.

 

If the PowerBI and data files are still around, could you try copying them to the local harddrive and opening them from there? Windows / PowerBI might possibly be seeing that the files are on a shared drive and trying to do something with them that it then has to wait for a timeout period. You could have a script do a copy-the-files-locally sync set up as a shortcut to run before PowerBI runs - it might be worth trying if you want to use your snazzy PowerBI setup.

 

Otherwise, you could of course build the snazzy graphs / charts using a Javascript library instead, that would be more portable / self-hostable than PowerBI.

[Marci]

PowerBI Pro licenses for all those whom you want to be able to view reports. S'about £20 per staff member per year (on whatever licensing tier we're on). Far cheaper than Premium capacity for us.

[Ditto]

Our IT provider has just told us we can have Power BI pro for about £2.50 per user per month, Premium for about £6 - this is Not For Profit. They were baffled why when I published, colleagues could access the report when I shared it- given that we are on Desktop free version; they felt that shouldn't be possible. I'm not convinced on the Premium price, or their general expertise. I'll report back as things progress.

[Ditto]

Having dug more into Power BI licensing I'm even more confused. See

 

I'm having a meeting tomorrow with a Power BI consultant with a view to having someone in for a short term contract, to help build reports and accelerate me to Power BI expertise. I feel we need him before we sign up to any licensing!

 

*** Edited to go to appropriate point in the video ***

Edited February 20, 2024 by Ditto

[themightymrp]

Has this changed recently? I had a dashboard published into Microsoft Teams which has been accessed by my technicians for a while now (I'm the only one with the Pro license). Now when they access it they get the message that they don't have the required license? It seems coincidental that I found this thread on first checking which makes me think there has been a change. Which sucks!

[smarties11]

Has this changed recently? I had a dashboard published into Microsoft Teams which has been accessed by my technicians for a while now (I'm the only one with the Pro license). Now when they access it they get the message that they don't have the required license? It seems coincidental that I found this thread on first checking which makes me think there has been a change. Which sucks!

 

Possible that they were given a premium trial account when they first accessed the dashboard? It's the default workflow if you don't have a license at all.

 

Also possible that it has changed, as the information I read online lead me to believe that publishing via Teams or SharePoint worked as a view only without a license.

[smarties11]

Just a quick message to say thanks to everyone for their replies - I've only just had time to come back to this thread but the information is appreciated. Looks like we'll have to bite the bullet with Pro licenses for those requiring access to the data, if that's what our SLT require.

 

Thanks again!

[themightymrp]

Out of interest, for anyone using Bromcom, how does this affect the publishing of custom dashboards into Bromcom? As I believe you just needed the one Pro license to do this previously?

@smarties11 - when I say I pushed a dashboard into Teams for them to view, it was functional for well over a year. So not a trial license applied

[Marci]

Still only need one to do this if Bromcom is setup to use SharedAccount and the shared account used is the PowerBI account to which the report is published. As far as PBI is concerned, anyone accessing reports via BC's shared viewer is that single PBI account holder.

 

No idea how you managed to achieve that @themightymrp - we've been doing this since 2018 and never managed to share a report with another non-pro license holder via any method / platform unless some form of trial was in play at either tenancy or individual user level.

[themightymrp]

No clue to be honest? We've managed to get it to work in Bromcom via the Shared Account method, but thanks @Marci for the response

[titch]

Has anyone got an update or definitive answer on this? The pro licence seems prohibitive if you want people to take an interest in the dashboards that are being created. Realistically we are only going to have 1 person creating dashboards and then lots of people viewing them. Works out thousands a year to do this if everyone has a pro licence.

 

Any advice welcome!

[DaveTheTech]

The following link makes me think that if you design dashboards, then you have a pro licence and store them in a collaboration space.

Viewers then have a free licence and are given permission to read the above space.

How content is organized in workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

[Marci]

Nope. Free license - can only view reports created and published to the workspace belonging to that free account. Cannot view reports shared with them by others (unless those reports are set to full public access).

PowerBI Pro licenses for all those whom you want to be able to view reports.

[Marci]

The following link makes me think that if you design dashboards, then you have a pro licence and store them in a collaboration space.Viewers then have a free licence and are given permission to read the above space.How content is organized in workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

At that link it states: Often, business users work with a free license. Learn more about licensing. If the content isn't stored in Premium capacity, the business user doesn't have access. ...and therefore, if you don't have Premium Capacity, then: Pro-licenses for those who need to design, and for those who need to view. Edited April 16, 2024 by Marci

[Ditto]

I'm still puzzled. As replied in the 2nd post of the thread, I have created a report and shared it with colleagues. I got a link afer publishing (to my OneDrive) and passed them on. This was all done using Power BI desktop. So, trying to follow MS advice of using a Workspace, I try find in the Power BI desktop where to 'Create Workspace'. There isn't one!

[Marci]

You log in to https://app.powerbi.com and create the Workspace there.

 

When you publish to that BI account from within PowerBI desktop you’ll be asked to choose the workspace.

 

Sharing via OneDrive and Publishing are two very different things.

[Ditto]

You log in to https://app.powerbi.com and create the Workspace there.

 

When you publish to that BI account from within PowerBI desktop you’ll be asked to choose the workspace.

 

Sharing via OneDrive and Publishing are two very different things.

Which in itself is odd as it is the desktop version I have and use for building reports. As for the publication and Onedrive sharing, I see they are different but I remain befuddled as to what I am meant to advise my colleagues on as a sensible implementation of me building reports for consumption by colleagues. Surely it shouldn't be so complex!

[Marci]

Power BI Desktop is a local design tool. You then publish your completed file to the service to share it with users (and do so from the online service) for general consumption. Once published, you log into the online service, configure data sources with credentials, set up auto refresh… then share away within Power BI online.

 

For users to see published reports (either in Power BI online, or PowerBI for teams, or the PowerBI mobile apps, or the MS Store PowerBI viewer app for windows), shared with them via Power BI Online, they need Pro licenses.

 

That’s how PowerBI is meant to be used.

[Ditto]

Power BI Desktop is a local design tool. You then publish your completed file to the service to share it with users (and do so from the online service) for general consumption. Once published, you log into the online service, configure data sources with credentials, set up auto refresh… then share away within Power BI online.

 

For users to see published reports (either in Power BI online, or PowerBI for teams, or the PowerBI mobile apps, or the MS Store PowerBI viewer app for windows), shared with them via Power BI Online, they need Pro licenses.

 

That’s how PowerBI is meant to be used.

Sort of makes sense and I can confirm as soon as I login on app.powerbi.com, and try to create a Workspace it does indeed show:

 

I don't think there should be a particular issue us getting a license upgrade, apart from slowness, as the not for profit rate is low. But the question I will get from the line manager is "As you published a report to 'My Workspace', and when you shared the URL after opening the report, it worked."

 

If I click the three dots and click share, I get message to upgrade.

 

Now I do believe having everything in My Workspace in the long run isn't a good idea, is they way we have been able to share a report with colleagues a bug?

[Marci]

I don't know - you haven't explained how you've specifically shared that report, and how the other users have then viewed that report. It sounds like you're just sharing the PBIX file to me outside of Power BI Desktop...? The only options within Power BI Desktop itself to "share" a report require Publishing.

[Ditto]

I don't know - you haven't explained how you've specifically shared that report, and how the other users have then viewed that report. It sounds like you're just sharing the PBIX file to me outside of Power BI Desktop...? The only options within Power BI Desktop itself to "share" a report require Publishing.

With as much accuracy as I can muster.

 

1. Open Desktop Power BI

2. Build report - PBIX file is stored in a subfolder of my OneDrive

3. In Desktop Power BI, I press the Publish button.

4. A dialogue pops up asking me to select a destination - it only offers 'My workspace' - at this point it is not clear where 'My workspace' resides

5. I select 'My Workspace'.

6. A dialogue pops up saying 'Publishing to Power BI - Success!' It has a link that says 'Open ''.pbix in Power BI

7. I click the link.

8. The link opens in a browser window with a URL in the format of app.powerbi.com/groups/me/reports/experience=powerbi

9. I send the link to a colleague and it opens fine and they can interact with the report.

 

 

I was expecting at step 9 it advises an upgrade to Pro is required, but it doesn't - it just appears to work.

 

 

*** Update - this is even more baffling ***

When my colleague hit the link, it said you need to request permission to view the report. The request popped up via messaging. When I clicked approve, it went to Power BI web interface and wouldn't approve without an upgrade. I then click 'Approve' in the email and it said 'Success - access approved'. But with my colleague reclicking the link, it then requires upgrade. So I'm confused why it worked ealier and not now - if indeed I did exactly these steps. I'm checking now.

 

To be honest, this might help as it cements my case the company needs to pay for Pro licensing!

Edited April 18, 2024 by Ditto

[Ditto]

Final update. I found the original link. I got a colleague to test. It required an upgrade. He recalled 100% it worked before and a second colleague confirmed. So all in all, that was just MS licensing weirdness and should not have worked. Oh well, just need to get the charity to cough up even more money to MS for everyone who wants to view/use a Power BI report that I have built.