Forum Discussion
Can Power BI Free Users Access reports Shared by Premium Users? or Do they require Pro License
With Power BI Premium you can share content with the free users through the App Workspaces. The free users will consume content via the App Workspaces. The App Workspaces are published from the workspace and this is where the content is consumed.
Recently, Microsoft released an updated to push out App Workspaces to be Automically installed for end users. See the blog post here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/automatically-install-apps/
Typically, you must have the free users find the App Workspaces they want to consume and install or add those workspaces they have access to see. The Pro users will setup the App Workspaces from the workspace and publish all or specific content to the App Workspace.
As far as sharing, Pro users can share the content with other Pro users. I believe you need a Pro user license to consume content that has been shared. Might double check this link: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/15042117-ability-to-view-shared-reports-dashboards-with-fre
More about Power BI premium information: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi-premium/
Hope this helps!
Advocate IINeeding pro license just to view reports seems like deceptive marketing. The whole marketing tag line is that you need pro license to create reports. App work spaces are cumbersome and confusing. The consumer needs a decent amount of know how and actually get into app work spaces to consume the reports.
If we want to publish these reports to a sharepoint portal, the only way seems to be that everyone get a license for pro. Other option is go and publish to workspaces, that is complicate to manage and update. This has got to get simple. MS is killing their product by making it difficult to consume.
The licensing is one of the lamest deployments I've ever seen.. Huge turnoff to using PowerBi product unless you consume 100 billion liscenses
RMDNASolution Sage
You actually have it backwards: reports are free to develop (as Power BI desktop is free and requires no account to use); the Pro license is to take advantage of the collaborative features of the Power BI Online service with other Pro users.
Once a report is uploaded, SharePoint actually has the capability to embed Power BI directly, which only takes a couple minutes, and only the publisher requires a Pro license.
Workspaces are just a matter of sharing access with relevant Pro users, and setting up a gateway for automated refreshes.
Also the viewers need a pro license or the content needs to be in a workspace that's in a Premium Capacity.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-embed-report-spo -> Licensing
I've been trying to implement this and, frankly, the workspaces do not work. I've posted a powerbi report to a teams workspace. The other users who do not have powerbi pro are unable to se anything, they just see a blank screen. So, I don't believe that powerbi will work for free users in a workspace.
From Microsoft:
For Embed in SharePoint Online reports to work, the following is required:
- A Power BI Pro license or a Power BI Premium Capacity with a Power BI license.
- The Power BI web part for SharePoint Online requires Modern Pages
- To consume an embedded report, users must sign in to Power BI service to activate their Power BI license.
