Forum Discussion
Microsoft EmployeeShare your thoughts on DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services (preview)
For us, this feature is very promising and we have taken steps to implement it within our enterprise (5000+ employees with Pro licenses). However, we ran into the limitation that all Viewers of reports that are developed using this feature must have Build permissions on all underlying datasets, and this is very troubling for us. Giving out Build permissions to employees who only (based on their function, and/or data-literacy level) require to view reports poses a high risk for us.
Currently we are urgently looking for a work-around or alternative solution to offer Customizable managed self-service BI to employees with Power BI within our the enterprise, as advocated in this Microsoft blog. Is there any update on the limitation that Build rights are always needed with the "DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services" feature?
mamsteroonieHelper I
This is the way it used to be for us, but they did change it to only require viewer permission a little while ago. Maybe this is only for premium licensing? we have premium. But we don't have to add them as a build access anymore to view a report that is using direct query for power bi dataset. Now, if they want to analyze in excel and build off the dataset, then they need build access.
- jeroenterheerdt
Hello FraukjeC , thanks for checking in! mamsteroonie is right, we changed the required permissions for Premium/PPU to just require Read permissions for viewing a report. Right now for Pro you still need Build. We are working on aligning that to Premium/PPU but it is taking longer than expected.
Hi jeroenterheerdt and mamsteroonie, thank you both for your information! We are indeed aware that within Premium/PPU licencing this issue is resolved. However, we have invested majorly in taking our full organisation to the next data-driven level by providing Power BI Pro licenses for all (5000+) employees only one year ago, so for us currenlty moving on to Premium/PPU licencing is not an option.
jeroenterheerdt I feel very optimistic hearing that Microsoft are actively working on removing the Build limitation for Pro users. This could mean that simply 'wait and work with the current limitation' might be a valid option for right now. Could you provide any time of timepath for this limitation to be fully dealt with for Pro users? Could we expect this within the current calendar year (2023) perhaps?
