Retirement of workspace collections: Questions on how to proceed

[pmdci]

Hi,

I got an email today saying that Workspace collections is being phased out in favour of Power BI embedded (see screenshot below).

Not sure what this means, since when using Power BI Embedded we still need to have a workspace. My understanding is that when using Power BI embedded, what we do is to configure a workspace to use dedicated capacity.

So how would that work if workspaces are being retired?

Regards,

P.

[GRCacace · Accepted solution]

There are two types of Power BI Embedded: in Azure, one is now called Power BI Embedded, and the other is called Power BI Embedded Workspace Collection.

When Power BI was first released, embedding was a new thing, and the initial solution was to create a shared Azure resource called a Power BI Embedded Workspace Collection. The only issues being that the resource wasn't dedicated, and monthly pricing was based on PBI report page views (I think this even pre-dates the concept of PBI dashboards). So, it was difficult to compute and reconcile the monthly billing charges, and performance couldn't be guaranteed. The process of publishing reports was that you'd create the report on PBI Desktop, save the PBIX file, and then develop code, or use the Windows PowerShell to upload the PBIX file to Azure.

In June, 2017, Microsoft deprecated the Workspace Collection, and created Power BI Embedded. The difference here is that users now get a dedicated set of resources, and billing is based on the time that resource is in the running/started state (you *can* pause the resource so you don't get billed when not using it). The minimum price for a resource that runs 24x7 for a month is $750 (that's the A1 capacity/pricing tier).

I will say that Power BI Embedded is far more convoluted to setup, and I'm struggling with a particular issue myself, but that's beside the point.

Now, what's confusing you is the nomenclature Microsoft is using. Power BI Embedded has you create an App Workspace on powerbi.com, which is the container for your PBI reports. This is not the same as the original PBI Workspace Collection. Unfortunately, Microsoft used the same word for two different things.

As for the email, I suspect you received it because you still have a PBI Workspace Collection in your Azure account. You'll have to log into your Azure portal to check on that. Of course, if you're still using the v1.0 embedding, you'll need to migrate that by the end of June, 2018!

Hope this helps answer your question!  

[pmdci]

Thanks so much for the answer!

We had an original Power BI Embedded Workspace, bu it is long gone (deleted -- for good. Over a year in fact).

Yes, the working is TERRIBLE. They should have said something like Legacy Power BI Embedded Workspace Collection.