SSAS connection with Power BI Desktop

[vickyd]

If we have a on-premise SSAS Tabular server, can users then install Power BI Desktop and create dashboards with a Live connection for free and share .pbix files that another user may have created and use it for free?

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@vickyd@KGrice I believe the live connection alone would require a Pro license if the reports were published to the Power BI Service. 

If the question is can you pass around PBIX files and "not" use the Power BI Service, then the answer is "yes" you can do that. The end users would still need read permissions on the tabular model, and you don't get any benefit of sharing via dashboards, mobile, etc. But it should work just fine.

[vickyd]

Yes. To start with I was just thinking of sharing the pbix file and see if people find value of using it over Excel. Mobile and publishing is definitely a plus but taking it one step at a time.  

[KGrice]

I think you can do all of that except the live connection piece. Well, you can connect to the data, but you won't be able to refresh it through Power BI. Anytime you wanted refreshed data, you'd have to refresh it from within the desktop and republish it. From the pricing chart, refreshing connections to on-premise SSAS is specifically called out as something that requires the Pro content.

You could look into Power Update if the refresh is the only piece you're missing out on without Pro (and it might be helpful even if you do get Pro content), but data refresh seems like a pretty critical component for anything with a live connection.