Arbor - Arbor Bi Viewer

[MYK-IT]

Hi,

 

Just after some advice in relation to what is required (licence wise) to use Abor Bi Viewer?

 

We have Microsoft Bi Viewer - iFrame enabled within Arbor, I just need clarity as to whether the person creating the report needs to have full Power Bi Pro licence or can use their existing assigned (and free) Microsoft Fabric (e.g. Power Bi Free) licence to achieve this?

 

I am aware that Power Bi Free is not secure (anyone with link can access) and is therefore recommended for public access (and can only access reports within the person's My Workspace). Therefore, suggesting Power Bi Pro licence is needed - but does this then mean every member of staff, who requires access to such report(s), also need a Power Bi Pro licence too? That would be very expensive!

 

Thanks,

 

 

Edited September 22, 2025 by MYK-IT

[BKGarry]

It is not just the person publishing that needs pro, it is all people who wish to access the Power BI reports that need to have a Pro License too.

[MYK-IT]

Thanks @BKGarry

 

I've just RTFM...  🤫

 

Do we need a PowerBI Pro license for every user?

When viewing a PowerBI iFrame report you will need to login using Microsoft's own authentication. This will need a relevant Pro license to support that option. 

[Ditto]

It's been a while sonce I looked at PowerBI license costing, but everyone having to have a Pro license sounds prohibitably costly. I thought there was a more reasonable approach with embedded application use of PowerBI. Power BI embedded Analytics is worth reviewing - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embedded-analytics-power-bi

There appear to be 'embed for your app users' and 'embed for your organisation'.

 

I had to abandon the research I was doing on this a whike back, as all options of PowerBI evaporated due to management decisions, but I do remember finding the following which looked like a fun sandbox.

 

https://playground.powerbi.com/en-us/

[Marci]

Everyone having Pro license is surprisingly cheap actually… s’how we run.

[Ditto]

What sort of figure are we suggesting here, per person, per month.

Edited October 9, 2025 by Ditto

[MYK-IT]

We are charged approx. £1.75 monthly, 1-month term (or £1.55 monthly, 1-year term / £17.50 annual, 1-year term). Soon adds up when you take into account how many members of staff could potentially require access to (view) the Power BI reports (on top of all the other MS Licenses!)

 

Currently testing with a small group of staff. Alternative may be export to Excel (use pivot tables etc) to produce 2-D / non-dynamic analytic views that are then posted within SharePoint etc for others to see.

Edited October 9, 2025 by MYK-IT

[Marci]

Same ball park for us… 

[bobsmith]

Not a plug for Bromcom but.... bromcom embeds the powerbi reports on a page within their site and you only need one pro licence that is assigned to the bromcom user that publishes it (credentials stored within bromcom) for all MIS users to see and interact with the page.

 

Why is Arbor not able to do the same thing? Or is Bromcom doing something wrong?

[FragglePete]

I looked at PowerBI to make a few dashboards.  Quite liked what I could do but then saw the licensing requirements!  Sheesh.  Yes, it'll soon add up.  

 

Ended up just creating my own from Arbor Live Feeds into JSON files, sprinkled with a bit of ChatGPT magic and an internal IIS PHP Server and have my own set of Dashboards.  I fully appreciate it won't be as clever a PowerBI but it's good enough for what we need.  Quite horrified (in a good way) how quick ChatGPT produced these for me and even got it to cache the data locally so we're not hitting the Arbor servers constantly.  

 

Still a work in progress, but feedback from SMT and Staff has been good so far and I'm adding new charts daily based on Reports I'm generating in Arbor.

 

Pete

 

[Marci]

2 hours ago, bobsmith said:

Not a plug for Bromcom but.... bromcom embeds the powerbi reports on a page within their site and you only need one pro licence that is assigned to the bromcom user that publishes it (credentials stored within bromcom) for all MIS users to see and interact with the page.

 

Why is Arbor not able to do the same thing? Or is Bromcom doing something wrong?

We were doing things as per Pete above for 5 years from SIMs but maintenance and annual customisations became a horror show, then switched to BC and PowerBI via shared viewer. We ran with this for 4 years. It’s fine whilst reports contain content suitable for all, but restrictive. Moved to Pro for SLT/MLT so they could have more bespoke reports along with financials etc, shared viewer for everyone else. Now everyone on Pro, no-one uses shared viewer, and we run a single MAT-wide model with row level security… using shared workspace deployment so roles get specific reports via specific workspaces.

Edited October 10, 2025 by Marci

[MYK-IT]

2 hours ago, bobsmith said:

Not a plug for Bromcom but.... bromcom embeds the powerbi reports on a page within their site and you only need one pro licence that is assigned to the bromcom user that publishes it (credentials stored within bromcom) for all MIS users to see and interact with the page.

 

Why is Arbor not able to do the same thing? Or is Bromcom doing something wrong?

I would hazard a guess that Microsoft licensing requirements have either (recently) changed and / or this method is not compliant any more???

 

Arbor FAQ State:

 

Quote

 

We previously used the BI Viewer via Arbor Labs - can we continue to use that option?

No, the Labs option will be removed during the 2025 October half-term. The PowerBI implementation has been changed to support a more transparent licensing model and we cannot support previously created reports. Please re-create your reports via the new iFrame option as soon as possible to avoid losing access.

 

Do we need a PowerBI Pro license for every user?

When viewing a PowerBI iFrame report you will need to login using Microsoft's own authentication. This will need a relevant Pro license to support that option. 

 

 

Hence why many, due to licensing costs, are either restricting Power BI Pro licenses to SLT/MLT and/or extracting and publishing the data via other methods.

 

Edited October 10, 2025 by MYK-IT

[Marci]

2 hours ago, MYK-IT said:

I would hazard a guess that Microsoft licensing requirements have either (recently) changed and / or this method is not compliant any more???

Nope to the former...  and (I suspect) never really was to the latter (as far as I'm aware)

Edited October 10, 2025 by Marci