share a PBIX file with data source and credentials info not available

[mvital]

Good afternoon -

I am in new to Power BI. I have watched a lot of tutorials and read many of the community messages and various articles. I am learning a lot of great info here. Thank you!

Am looking for some clarification. I have created a pbix file in Power Bi Desktop. I want to share it with others so they can use the data set to design their own reports, visuals. I imported the data via a native direct query to a view in SQL Server and also created one using via import. I have played around with changing the 'data source settings' -> 'edit permissions' options. What I want to achieve is protecting the pbix file so that others are not able to see the data source connection info and the login credentials. I am able to see all the information as well as my SQL Server native query details (they are greyed out) using the various permissions. Is there a way to make that information private, yet still give the user access to the data set? We have a central database that houses many projects. We want to give users access to only their project and the data associated with that project only so they are able to design their own reports. We are concerned with the security of the pbix file. I know right now there is no way to password protect the file. I have voted for that option as provided in another community question. 🙂

thank you in advance for brainstorming with me and any guidance.

MV

[v-ljerr-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @mvital,

Am looking for some clarification. I have created a pbix file in Power Bi Desktop. I want to share it with others so they can use the data set to design their own reports, visuals.

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Power BI Desktop is currently a free desktop application everyone can install right on his/her own computer for personal use. But for sharing and collaboration, we should consider using Power BI Service instead. 

Reference:
How should I collaborate and share dashboards and reports in Power BI?

Regards

[mvital]

I'm sorry, I don't think I am expalining very well.

We have a group of database managers that want to give access to data sets from the central database per project/site to other project team members (non-database folks) so they can develop their own reports/dashboards.  One of the important issues that we need to consider is the security/confidentiality of the data once the data is exported from the SQL database and imported/pushed into the Power BI dataset. The Power BI end users may or may not be database managers; these users may or may not understand the intricacies of exporting the correct data from SQL Server into the Power BI dataset. We want to have this available as it extends the value of Power BI to a broader set of end users who can visualize and analyze the data, without necessarily understanding the complexities behind the data. Once the data is in Power BI, there is no concept of SQL permissions on the data - anyone that can access the dataset can access all the data within the dataset (regardless of site, etc.).

 We can link to the SQL Server database in Power Bi and "filter"/query the data sets they need and save the .pbix file and send it to the project team for their use. How do we or what's the best way to secure that .pbix file so that the end users of the data set we've provided is not able to view the server name/database name, password etc.? Is that possible? Does sending the .pbix file makes sense?

Hope this helps clear up my question.

[Anonymous]

Hey similar issue here, did you ever manage to solve it?