Semantic models not appearing in workspace

[samkikibaker]

I currently have the reporting folder from my main branch of my ADO repository synced with my reporting-dev workspace. I have admin access and can see 1 power BI report and 2 semantic models - everything working fine. 

My college has been assigned the DataScientist role via a security group. This role has the workspace viewer permission on this workspace as well as the build permission assigned directly on both semantic models. However, unlike me, they can only see the power bi report. The two semantic models do not appear in the reporting-dev workspace for them. 

The semantic models are built from a data warehouse in the data-dev workspace. The DataScientist role has 

workspace contributor on the data-dev workspace as well as Read, Write, ReadData, ReadAll, Monitor on the gold warehouse in this workspace. 

Why can my college view the power bi report, but not the semantic models in the reporting-dev workspace?

[burakkaragoz · Accepted solution]

Hi @samkikibaker ,

Yeah, this one’s a bit confusing at first. Even though your colleague has Build permission on the semantic models, the Viewer role in the workspace UI is what’s blocking them from actually seeing those models.

Basically, the Viewer role is super limited when it comes to what shows up in the workspace — it hides semantic models from the UI, even if the user technically has access to build or query them.

If you bump their role up to Contributor, they’ll be able to see everything, including the semantic models. Contributor includes Build by default and doesn’t have the same UI restrictions.

Here’s a Microsoft doc that touches on this behavior:
Microsoft Learn 

Let me know if you want to keep them as Viewer for governance reasons — there are a few workarounds depending on what they need to do.

If my response resolved your query, kindly mark it as the Accepted Solution to assist others. Additionally, I would be grateful for a 'Kudos' if you found my response helpful.

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[samkikibaker]

Ahh I see - as usual my expectations were wrong rather than anything being broken! Thanks for the response, that makes sense. I think I'll keep them as is for now

[v-veshwara-msft]

Hi @samkikibaker ,

Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.

Based on internal testing and confirmed documentation, even when a user has Build permission granted on semantic models, if their workspace role is Viewer, they will not be able to see the semantic models in the workspace. This is because the Viewer role restricts visibility of semantic models and effectively overrides the Build permission when it comes to UI access.

To allow the user to view and access semantic models in the workspace, their role needs to be elevated to at least Contributor, which inherently includes Build permission and also provides visibility to all artifacts in the workspace.

Please go through these links for details:
Copy reports from other apps or workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Semantic model permissions - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps. Please reach out for further assistance.
If this post helps, then please consider to give a kudos and Accept as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Thank you.

[alfBI]

Hi,

We are experiencing an issue when trying to use the “Run a query against a dataset model” action in Power Automate. Even though the user has Build permissions on the dataset, the model only appears in the selection list if the user is assigned the Contributor role on the workspace. The Viewer role does not seem to be sufficient.

This behaviour is problematic from a governance perspective, as granting Contributor rights allows users to modify or even delete workspace content—something that should not be required just to query a dataset. It makes no sense to provide write permissions to users who only need to run queries.

Has anyone else encountered this situation and found a workable solution?

[v-veshwara-msft]

Hi @samkikibaker ,
Just wanted to check if the response provided was helpful. If yes, please consider marking it as "Accepted Solution" to assist others with similar queries. If further assistance is needed, please reach out.
Thank you.