Forum Discussion
Help Needed: Power BI Licensing and Admin Issues for Small Business Reporting Migration
Hello everyone!
I'm encountering an issue with Power BI as a small company since we don't have access to all Microsoft Office products or anything related to Microsoft Business. The company's goal is to migrate its reporting system to Power BI and embed the code into its proprietary website, accessible to clients. I have several questions:
- How many licenses do I need and what type?
- To publish the report, it requires me to be the admin of my email domain. I've followed steps from some admin takeover responses, but it doesn't work because I'm not the admin of Power BI.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Hi 2Open ,
The first rule of thumb is that "to see a report" you must have a license. It doesn't matter if it is embedded or in Teams or the app or whatever.
That said, to create and publish a report to the Power BI Workspace you need to have a PRO license at minimum (other license types mentioned below). So, you don't have to be an admin in the domain. You just have to have a Power BI license assigned to your userid that you are logging in with. Also, you can have "just" Power BI purchased and not be a Microsoft user in any other way for Power BI to work.
You mentioned "taking over" - if you are meaning that there is an existing report by somebody else that didn't share the workspace with you then you are correct in that an admin needs to give you access to an existing workspace.
The questions about licensing really come into volume of data and number of users. If you have lots of users (internal and external) and you are providing the licenses, then you should consider purchasing a Premium capacity. If it is a just a handful, then Pro is probably sufficient. This link gives some of the market pricing (for USA). You may have a less expensive route if you already have an account with a reseller.
1 Reply
- collinq
Super User
Hi 2Open ,
The first rule of thumb is that "to see a report" you must have a license. It doesn't matter if it is embedded or in Teams or the app or whatever.
That said, to create and publish a report to the Power BI Workspace you need to have a PRO license at minimum (other license types mentioned below). So, you don't have to be an admin in the domain. You just have to have a Power BI license assigned to your userid that you are logging in with. Also, you can have "just" Power BI purchased and not be a Microsoft user in any other way for Power BI to work.
You mentioned "taking over" - if you are meaning that there is an existing report by somebody else that didn't share the workspace with you then you are correct in that an admin needs to give you access to an existing workspace.
The questions about licensing really come into volume of data and number of users. If you have lots of users (internal and external) and you are providing the licenses, then you should consider purchasing a Premium capacity. If it is a just a handful, then Pro is probably sufficient. This link gives some of the market pricing (for USA). You may have a less expensive route if you already have an account with a reseller.