topic Re: May 3 announcement FAQ in Service

May 3 announcement FAQ

MiguelMartinez — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 09:47:51 GMT

Today we announced changes to Power BI Pro and the free service effective June 1, as well as the availability of an extended Power BI Pro trial offer. Please refer to our free Power BI service changes board for more information.

This discussion board contains a set of frequently asked questions. Please share your comments and additional questions.

What capabilities are being added to the free service?

Beginning June 1, the free service will have capabilities equivalent to Power BI Pro. This includes the same 1 GB workbook size limit, up to 8 daily scheduled refreshes for datasets, and maximum 1 million rows/hour streaming data rate. We’re also providing access to all data sources, including those available through the on-premises data gateway.

Which Power BI Pro capabilities are not available with the free service?

Peer-to-peer dashboard sharing, group workspaces (now called app workspaces), and analyze in Excel with Power BI apps are capabilities limited to Power BI Pro.

When will these changes go into effect?

Changes to the free service will go into effect on June 1.

Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?

No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.

How do I know if I’m eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?

Please refer to the extended Power BI Pro trial terms and conditions.

What should I do if I’m not eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?

I’m currently taking advantage of the standard 60-day Power BI Pro trial – will I also be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial when it becomes available on June 1?

Power BI Pro trial users will be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial offer as long as they registered for the free service on or before May 2.

How do I accept the extended Power BI Pro trial offer?

Sign in to the Power BI service any time on or after June 1 and follow the prompts to register for the extended Power BI Pro trial.

Does the introduction of Power BI Premium change the capabilities of the free service?

Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users.

Are any changes being made to Power BI Pro?

No changes are being made to Power BI Pro.

Are any changes being made to Power BI Desktop?

No changes are being made to Power BI Desktop.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

dsynan — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:04:05 GMT

If I have a PRO license and have been sharing dashboards with Free users, will those free users no longer be able to access the dashboards that I shared with them as a PRO user? Put another way, going forward on June 1, is the only way to see a dashboard someone else created and shared is to have a PRO license?

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:28:52 GMT

Can you provide a little bit of clarification around the sharing? I understand that a "free" user will not be able to share with others.

If I am a "Pro" user, can I share my dashboards with "Free" users? In our organization, there are really two types of individuals, Report Writers and Report Consumers. It would not make sense for us to pay for Pro licenses just for the users that we would be viewing some of the reports that we are putting together since they would not be using any of the other features of a pro license.

Nick

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

MiguelMartinez — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:36:21 GMT

Hi dsynan,

If you are sharing dashboards/reports with free users, beginning June 1^st they will need to take advantage of the extended Pro trial to continue accessing the content. After the extended trial expires, users will need a Pro license to maintain access.

Terms and conditions for the extended trial can be found here.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

jimbobTX — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:35:58 GMT

Um...what's Power BI PREMIUM? First I've seen of this.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:36:52 GMT

dsynan The free users will need to sign up for the Pro Trail.

To answer the second question. There are now two ways they can see it. One, the end users have a Pro license/Trial (As mentioned above). Or, the person sharing the content has a premium license on top of the Pro license, then the end users will be able to see the dashboards as free users.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:38:35 GMT

How does this tie in with the new "Premium" service? Will the premium service be a way for "free" users to view dashboards made by "Pro" users without needing a "Pro" license?

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

mlgrannell — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:40:43 GMT

I hate to risk being pedantic but what constitutes a "share"? Are we talking about sharing in the web based Power BI or are we talking about publishing URLs for reports and dashboards? This isn't clear at all.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

MiguelMartinez — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:44:13 GMT

Hi jimbobTX,

We announced Power BI Premium this morning on website and blog.

You can find more info and resources in the announcement blog post and on the Power BI website premium page.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

dsynan — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:44:30 GMT

From what i've seen it was announced today. Seems like a good thing in the long-term, however less than a month's notice that changes for free users will be going into effect is no bueno.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

jester121 — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:57:52 GMT

Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?
No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.

All our Power BI users have E3 licenses, so we still be getting screwed out of the ability to share dashboards among our users?

Microsoft, this is absolute garbage -- taking away something that's been included in our licensing, and now we have to figure out the budget impact of pro licenses (like who needs them?) Absolute BS.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

kbl1726 — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:58:08 GMT

So, free users now need a Pro account to view shared dashboards.

Power BI Embedded is being merged with Power BI premium. The Premium capacity calculator shows that a single node starts at $4,995 per month. Is the existing Power BI Embedded pricing model, $5 per 100 sessions, going away too? Because if so, you may have just scared off a ton on small businesses.

I'm developing a dashboard to share with a handful of clients (external), up to 100 ideally. None of them need editing capabilties or data access. As of now I can share that with each of them and they can view it for free as long as they have a free Power BI account. That is good for me price wise, but a bit unprofessional it requires a Microsoft account and Microsoft login. So I'm willing to pay for embedded, becuase it might cost me $100-200/month to have the dash/reports embedded in my current website. Much more professional and the cost is manageable.

But now there are two issues I see. If I share the dash, they have to login through Microsoft and pay $10 per month. That is a no go. Even if I were willing to pay the cost for them, which I would be, there is no way for me to manage their accounts to do so and the whole thing would be very unprofessional. If the embedded pricing model changes, I'll have to pay $5k per month for premium so that I can embed my own webapp to share with a few clients. This would kill my business.

Please tell me I am misreading something or that the Power BI embedded pricing model will remain. Otherwise, there is simply no feasible, economic solution to share with a handful of external users. I'll have to find another BI service. Furthermore, in any case, the constant changes to pricing models creates great uncertainty about building a product with Power BI knowing that I, as a small business, could be quickly priced out.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

masplin — Wed, 03 May 2017 20:02:45 GMT

We very recently started using power BI to share in a small orgnaisation (10 users). Several of the users clicked the pro trial button despite us not having made any use of the pro functions. As far as I can tell several of our users will now be inelligable for a trial, when we have to actually use the Pro features to share dashboards. This seems inhenernetly unfair to be slapped with a significant bill when we haven't even got started on whether this is a good solution. I'm sure this goes for many people who took up the pro trial, but have never needed to use it. This is a fundamental change to the relationship between free/pro so you shouldn't be inelligable for having had a trial under the old regime.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

joshmwolff — Wed, 03 May 2017 20:03:05 GMT

Thanks for this FAQ. What about reports I've uploaded to PowerBI service and then published to web? Will the embed codes cease to work after June 1?

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

richbenmintz — Thu, 04 May 2017 23:07:57 GMT

I cannot believe that Microsoft will be deprecating the current incarnation of power bi embedded with a migration plan that includes a minimum spend of $5000 per month on power bi premium! I work for a small company that simply cannot afford to pay $60,000 USD a year for an embedded platform. Can someone please explain how the minimum spent for power bi premium is $60,000 USD a year. I totally understand that large organizations complained that user based licensing got very expensive, but why is Microsoft not considering the SME in the Premium plan especially if embedded is being migrated to this licensing scheme.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

kbl1726 — Wed, 03 May 2017 20:30:09 GMT

Will Power BI embedded pricing remain in place, even though it is being merged with Premium? Becuase as a small business, we can't afford $5k for a single node each month to service a dozen or two clients (external users) who don't need editing, particularly when embedded would cost us less than 10% of that. And becuase you've removed the ability to view a shared dashboard using Free, all would have to upgrade to Pro. The issue here is not that the 10$ per month, I would cover that if I could. But it is utterly unprofessional to ask clients to go through the hassle of signing up for a paid service just to access my service and have me send them a reimbursement check. Furthermore, there's no simple way to onboard them into my account as they are all external users with thier own corporate accounts, policies, etc. The nice thing with the previous embedded is that they could login to my website, where they already had an account, to view their dashboard. Please tell me I'm misreading something. Otherwise you've squeezed out a large number of small businesses.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

MiguelMartinez — Wed, 03 May 2017 20:48:35 GMT

That’s correct Anonymous, as we announced this morning Power BI Premium tackles that issue. We have a calculator that can help organizations figure out which option makes sense depending on their mix of Pro Users and readers. Depending on size and usage, the solution might be different.

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

MiguelMartinez — Wed, 03 May 2017 21:00:43 GMT

That's exactly right Anonymous. As Anonymous mentioned on the announcement blog "...many organizations contain users who aren’t actively creating BI content, but require the ability to consume content distributed to them. Power BI Premium enables Power BI Pro users to publish reports broadly across the enterprise and beyond, without requiring recipients to be licensed per user".

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

PowerBIUser123 — Wed, 03 May 2017 21:42:51 GMT

So, if I understood you correctly, if a Pro license user wants to share a dashboard with another person, that person will have to have Premium or Pro licenses to view it.
And if the a Pro license user has a Premium license on top of it, he (or she) can share content with Free license users.
Could yo please confirm it?

Re: May 3 announcement FAQ

SourceToShare — Wed, 03 May 2017 22:02:01 GMT

Hey Power BI people! I see from the FAQ that

"Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users"

Is that also the case for content distributed by pro users using on-prem analysis services. In other words, is this also true:

Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in on-prem Analysis Services will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users

Thanks,

Derek