Best Practices Workspace sharing

[juangomez]

Hi Everyone

Our team is new in Power BI and we are still learning the multiple capabilities of the tool.

We are looking to create a single point of contact to deliver reports across multiple functions and responsibilities.

In this regard, I am looking for best practices to create our reports and manage the tool.

• Is it a must to have a Premium licence to share dashboards and reports? I have seen some people sharing an 'Embeded link' for some reports but I have not been able to use it.
• Is it recommended to create a new Workspace to only upload the reports? or can I use the already existing Sharepoint site that I use only with my team?
• If I create new members to view the published App, do they also have access to the sharepoint site's files?
• I am looking to sync the final reports to some files I have in my team sharepoint, but I am worried about access to those files.

Any input or tutorial links would be appreciated

Juan Diego

[edhans]

1. You need a Pro license to see reports that are in a workspace. Not Premium. Premium is about capacity and other features.
2. You cannot upload reports to SharePoint. You can only show them in SharePoint via an embedded link from a report in a workspace.
3. Maybe. If you add a user to a Gen 1 workspace, they are also added to the Sharepoint site if it is a new "Group" based Sharepoint site. Not if it is an older classic Sharepoint Site. If it is a new Gen 2 workspace though, users are not added to anything else. See this about creating new Gen 2 workspaces or converting Gen 1 to Gen 2. If you are creating new, go with Gen 2. Gen 1 will likely be depreciated at some point.
4. I think your best bet is to create a Gen 2 workspace, add users to it, and then you shoudn't worry about their access to SharePoint files. They are totally separate. It is the Gen1 workspace which is really part of a Group, which has access to SharePoint, Teams, Outlook Groups, and Power BI Gen 1 workspaces. They are all different facets built on the Outlook Group model in Exchange. Power BI Gen2 workspaces leaves that behind

[juangomez]

Thanks for your answer.

1. I'm looking for savings, as only 2 or 3 people are developing the actual reports and 100+ users must see the results. Seems expensive to acquire 100+ Pro licenses

Although I already have the upgraded to Gen 2 workspace (from the sharepoint I already had before).

I understand the advice is to create a new separte workspace to only have the BI Reports.

[edhans · Accepted solution]

Gen 1 is the workspace that is created whenever you create an Office Group, which is the newish model where along with that a team is created (though you don't have to have the team actually enabled), a SharePoint site, and a Power BI Workspace. It is all based on the Group.

You do have to have a Power BI Pro license for content viewers in a Group or Power BI workspace, unless you have Power BI Premium. For Power BI Premium, only the $10 pro license are required for publication. Viewers are "free" if you consider free something that comes with a Power BI Premium license that starts at $4,995 per month for a company.

With Pro though, everyone needs Pro even if they just view. 

If everyone you want to share reports with can see all reports, you could have one workspace, but we have a dozen workspaces here because there are reports specific to departments. Payroll, Sales, Accounts Payable, Finance, etc. The workspaces keep those separate. If you put them in one workspace, everyone that has access to the workspace sees everything.

[MSoranno]

@edhans 
This doesn't really answer my question. So I made a Team through Microsoft Teams, consequently that made a workspace as well we can use. I published a report to this workspace, but it says the Team is the owner, so I can't help but feel like this is the reason I can pin it to My Workspace's dashboard.

I make most of the Reports for my organization and I publish them to their respective Workspaces, then I create custom User Metric reports, all of which I'd like to pin to My Workspace's dashboard so I can keep track of how people are using my reports. However, I'm between a number of problems such as not being able to pin them, or even copy the report to My Workspace.

[edhans]

You cannot pin tiles from one workspace to another. WIth Gen 2 workspaces, you can make reports based on a dataset in another Gen2 workspace if you have permissions, and then pin those to your own dashboard to monitor multiple spaces.

[MSoranno]

@edhans 

You touch on the concept of Gen 1 workspace vs. Gen 2. Can you better define what is a Gen 1?

I have an issue where I made a bunch of Teams and these teams had a workspace made automatically when we got Power BI, but now I can't share reports from this workspace to my own personal one, because I'm not shown as the owner the actual team itself is labelled as the owner, despite me being the owner of that team.