Multi tenancy in Powerbi Service

[joshpt]

Hi 

I have some experience on Powerbi, working in a single tenant approach. We have a tenant, reports were created on PBI desktop, and deployed to PBI service.

Now we have a challenge and i'm not sure about the best solution. We have created a set of reports to share with some external clients. We have around 10 clients and a set of 30 reports. These numbers should grow, but don't expect to have more that 25/30 clients.

Each client has its own database, but all databases share the same structure. The reports would also be the same across all clients. 

Each client can have between 5 and 20 users.

We don't have any kind of platform where we can "embed" the powerbi reports and  being so our goal is to have our clients accessing directly powerbi service.

Ideally our clients would have a powerbi pro account.

Some of our clients don't have any kind of relation with microsoft and this also needs to be considered.

I've been reeding some stuff but most documents i've found are associated with "Power BI Embedded". 

My main question is, what is the best architecture for this solution ?

Thanks in advance

[joyhackett]

@joshpt, 

I am trying to come up with an architecture for a very similar (almost exact) scenario. We have 10 reports and 50 customers (each with 5-10 users). Each customer has their own database connection. We, too, want them to access the reports through the Power BI Service so they can have all the functionality without us having to build an embedded application. 

I would really appreciate hearing what you have come up with as a solution!

Thanks!

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @joshpt,

If your report data source has the same data structures, you can refer to the following blog or parameterize the report data source connection with query parameters then you can simply switch between different data sources:

Using the Power BI Service Parameters to change connection strings (To possibly change between Dev 

For the share functions, if your reports do not include any sensitive data, you can consider sharing with the 'publish to web' feature and it allows users who know this link to access it without a pro license. (these share contents are 'public' and do not include any security options)

Publish to web from Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng

[joshpt]

Hi @v-shex-msft 

thanks for the reply.

Regarding the powerbi service parameters i got it and it could be a solution for part of my problem.

Now, each client has their own database where they are running their businesses. I cannot expose these reports to "public". 

In general terms i want/need to control the users that have access to a report. If i have to create several copies of the same report, each one poiting to the client database, that would be acceptable. 

I was just trying to understand if someone already created this type of approach, if it's manageable and how to control the accounts and the access.

I have clients that don't have any kind of relationship with Microsoft and being so, what is the best approach for this kind of user when it comes to powerbi?

Should i create them in our AD as guests and "give" them a powerbi account on out tenant? Or should they create a powerbi account and i just share the reports with them?

Would it be better to use one tenant that i control or should i tell my clients that they need to create a tenant and then i step in and install the reports?

Thanks

[v-shex-msft]

Hi @joshpt,

Perhaps you can try to share with template app features.
You can parameterize your report with a parameter then your customer can get data from this app with their owner connection keys to generate their own reports.
After these steps, you only need to maintain the template file and your customer can get the corresponding reports.

What are Power BI template apps? - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Regards,

Xiaoxin Sheng