Setting up RLS within SUBSCRIPTION on Power BI Service

[sshokri89]

Hi all,

I have a question that's really driving me crazy. I have a huge report with around 50 top subscribers. I need to send the report as PDF to each subcriber. and each subscriber (manager) is set as a report-wide filter. I know of 3 methods:

1. power automate and power bi premium capacity > which I can't afford to have and PPU doesn't work (I have PPU license). this method is by using EXPORT TO PDF via power automate (MS Flow) but only works with premium capacity unfortunately.

2. third-party apps > I have managed to get it right with PowerBI Robots but since it's against company policy, I can't use third-pary apps (confidential data).

3. RLS with Subscription > I guess this might be my only option but can't get it to work. I have set a role (say "David Kay") and when I view as David Kay inside powerbi desktop, I can see that the data has been correctly filtered. When I publish my report to the service, I'll go to SECURITY of my dataset and set an email address for that role (say "DavidKay@Contoso.com"). What I do next is that I go to SUBCRIPTION part of the report and subcriber myself (admin) and DavidKay@Contoso.com to the report and do a test run; but unfortunately, what I get is the full report without any RLS applied on it. Additionally, I am able to see this message when adding second user: " Subscribed users receive report attachments with data based on your permissions" . So I'm guessing that I'm doing something wrong.

Any ideas champs on above #3? or any other method that I'm not aware of? any technical method (including python) is ok; I just need to get it done.

Thanks in advance,

[lbendlin]

Method 1 is a no-go as well, Power Automate has a ridiculously low limit before you hit a 429.

"error": {

    "code": "ActivityLimitReached",

    "message": "You have too many pending requests to make another right now. Please wait."

 }

Challenge your users if they really need 50 PDFs, or if they could use the live report instead.

Maybe explore paginated reports?

[sshokri89]

Hi Ibendlin,

Do you have Premium Capacity at your reach and you tested? if that's the case, then it's really a shame that Microsoft can't provide this feature. because as we all know, most end-users (management level) would like to receive everything in their inbox as PDF rather than venturing some new territories like app.powerbi.com; I know they can be trained but that's another discussion.

wondering if there is any solution to this at all.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

Yes, we've been through that phase. It was painful and included lots of shouting but now our management level users are the best advocates for the online version. Enabling "Personalize Visual" was crucial in making the transition.