Allowing external guests into Power BI Service workspace

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I would like to invite a guest from outside my organisation into one of our organisation's Power BI Service workspaces. I have added my guest to my Azure Active Directory, and our IT has turned on the feature "allow external guest users to edit and manage content in the organization".

Unfortunately, my guest still can't access or view the Power BI workspace on his Power BI service.

Is there anything else that we need to do to allow the guest access to our organisation's workspace?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Best wishes,

Mirjam

[v-yanjiang-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

There is another way that doesn't require creating an app, that is after you share the workspace to the guest user, provide them with the Tenant URL.

To find the tenant URL, follow these steps.

1. In the Power BI service, in the header menu, select help (?), then select About Power BI.

2. Look for the value next to Tenant URL. Share the tenant URL with your allowed guest users.

By the Tenant URL, they can sign in to the guest user account and see any content you have shared with them.

More reference: Guest users who can edit and manage content

Share outside your organization

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ kalyj

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[frankvb]

Does this also apply to this setting about users who can browse https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Allowing-external-guests-into-Power-BI-Service-wor... or only to users who can edit and manage: Distribute content to external guest users with Microsoft Entra B2B - Power BI | Microsoft Learn ?

[v-yanjiang-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

First of all, I hope you figure it out, when you invite an external user as a guest user in the Azure Active Directory, it's not actually the external account itself that becomes the guest user, instead, allow another account to be created using this email address.

For example, for the user a@abc.com, when he is invited as a guest user in the domain def.com, the complete account of the generated guest user is a_abc.com#EXT#@def.com, when you share content to the guest user, he still get the email in the email address a@abc.com. When you share content to the guest user, you will see the complete account in the dialog.

For the guest user, he can only sign in the guest account through email to see the shared contents, instead of logging in directly on the webpage.

You can create app in the workspace and give the user permission in the App, then the guest user gets an email indicating that you shared the app with them. Through the link in the email, he still chooses his original company account to log in, and he will see the shared content.

Reference: Publish an app in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Distribute content to external guest users with Azure AD B2B - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ kalyj

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[Anonymous]

Hi!

Thank you very much! This is very helpful to read. 

So this means that I *can* share apps with external users (I have indeed make that work) but *can't* share workspaces with external users?

Best wishes,

Mirjam

[v-yanjiang-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

No, the first time you use app not workspace is because app will send an email but workspace not, the user needs this email to log into his guest account, but after he loged in, he can also see the workspace you have shared with him.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ kalyj

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[Anonymous]

Many thanks for your reply!

The guest I am trying to share the Workspace with has a Premium account so that should not be an issue?

[arvindsingh802]

Do you mean you have Premium Per User ?

If yes, With PPU workspace all the App users will also require PPU license
If your workspace is backed by premium capacity then only free users/pro users can use premium capacity backed workspace
refer license type table in Power BI licensing for users in your organization - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

[Anonymous]

I (who is sharing) have a Pro license. I am sharing it with a guest who has a Premium account (I believe the guest had PPU but could also be an organisational wide Premium account).

Are you saying that I can only share my workspace with other Pro users - not with a Premium user?

[arvindsingh802]

Can you share the error message that Guest is seeing while acessing the content

[Anonymous]

The guest is not seeing any error message: the workspace just does not show up in the guest's Power BI service workspaces list.

[arvindsingh802]

Have you provided Power BI Pro license to your guest users or backed your workspace by Premium capacity then only they will be able to acess the content