Improve on sharing Power BI reports with external users

[tpet]

Hello,

I've worked with Microsoft support on this issue and was encouraged to submit it here.

My problem:

When I share a report with an external user they are asked to sign in. When they sign in with a hotmail or google email they get the error, "You can't sign in here with a personal account. Use you work or school account instead."

MS Support solution: 
When a report is shared with the users to their personal accounts - the users will receive email notification that a report has been shared with them but they will not be access the report because Power BI requires that you use a work or school email address. You can't sign up  using email addresses provided by consumer email services or telecommunication providers. This includes outlook.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, and others. If you don't have a work or school account, learn about alternate ways to sign up.

Sign up or purchase the Power BI service as an individual - Power BI | Microsoft Docs
 

Unfortunately, you cannot sign up to Power BI with your Gmail account but there are alternate ways to create work or school account . Please find the detailed documentation below.
Signing up for Power BI with a new Microsoft 365 Trial - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

My problem with the MS solution: 

The MS support solution takes several steps back and forth between an internal admins and the external End user.

I've put together this documentation on all the steps needed for Power BI access for an external account based on Microsoft documentation. Here are the basic steps.

• External End user signs up for a MS account. They need to associate a personal/corporate account with a MS. It ends up looking like this, exteraluseraccount_gmail.com#EXT#@mercycorpsorg.onmicrosoft.com
• Internal Azure Admin invites a guest user in Azure AD using their email now associated with a onmicrosoft.com account
• External End user accepts invitation and signs into MS with their personal/corporate account
• Internal Power BI admin shares a Power BI report with end user
• External End users follows a link in a new email to view Power BI report.

Thanks,

Tim

[v-robertq-msft]

Hi, 

If you have an idea to help to improve the PowerBI, you can go to the Power BI Idea to submit a new idea so that people with the same idea can vote for you. I will also vote for you.

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _Robert Qin