User to build Semantic Model using table granted via OneLake Data Access Role

Hi stellahe102 ,
Thanks for your detailed follow-up, your understanding is correct. To answer your questions: for Direct Lake semantic models, only Lakehouse Build permission is required to create a semantic model, users do not need the “Read All SQL Endpoint data” permission unless they are querying the SQL endpoint directly (Lakehouse Permissions - Microsoft Docs).
Regarding the second question, yes, you may create a shortcut in a separate Lakehouse that points to the Employee table. Just make sure users have Read permission on the source Lakehouse where the Employee table resides and Build permission on the new Lakehouse where they are creating the semantic model.
Finally, if someone else creates the semantic model and shares it, this also works. As per my knowledge, If the semantic model is in Direct Lake mode, users might still need Read permission on the Lakehouse at runtime to query the data; however, if the semantic model is in Import mode, no Lakehouse access is required after the data is imported (Dataset Permissions - Microsoft Docs, Direct Lake Deep Dive - Microsoft Blog).

Hope this helps.

Thank you.