Can a Power BI Admin take over a personal "My Workspace"?

[rodneyc8063_1]

So Im bouncing around with different "security" scenarios with my team and this one came up

Just confirming, from what we understand - with an APP workspace - If necessary we can go into our power bi service admin portal, find the workspace and assign ourselves as an admin to the workspace, and subsequently re-assign or do other admin stuff as needed - Did I get this straight?

If so, now a wrinkle

Lets say we have someone with a pro license - They arent the smartest guy, and created a bunch of reports from their "My Workspace" and shared things out to their team from their "My Workspace".

This guy decides to retire and quits and leaves the company.

As a Power BI Admin - Is there anyway for an admin to gain access to this users "My Workspace" in order to recover any reports?

[lbendlin]

No, "My Workspace"  workspaces are off limits. As a tenant admin you cannot add yourself to these.

[rodneyc8063_1]

Hi @lbendlin 

Thanks for the clear answer 🙂

If thats the case, lets say we do come across a case like this how can we go about potentially recovering the reports?

I think as I was reading about this, someone had suggested to go to our central IT admin - Reactivate this persons account, reset the password to gain temporary access and then move the reports out.

Not sure if thats the only/best way

We will be heavily advertising to not do development in "My Workspace", but theres always that one off guy that creates this sort of situation!

[ThePBIMaster · Accepted solution]

Hi @rodneyc8063_1 @lbendlin,

I know this is an old thread, but the OP's request is perfectly legitimate. Thankfully, Microsoft have made improvements to admin's access to personal workspaces. More details can be found here - Announcing My workspace governance improvement (Public Preview) | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsof...

This was clearly an issue given the number of users voting for this idea on the Ideas forum. Having users create junk reports from junk data and sharing it, or creating good reports that admins can't access, is inconsistant with power bi implementation best practices as described in Mcirosoft's own white paper and documentation. Thankfully progress has been made on resolving this issue.

[rodneyc8063_1]

@ThePBIMaster - Thank you so much for updating with this info! Yes its an old thread but the "issue" still exists today and I appreciate the new info!

[lbendlin]

what part of "off limits"  was unclear?  I won't go into the legal aspects of impersonating the departed user - your company policies may or may not support that. But from an effort perspective you should just count your blessings and move on. And do your advertisement/education as you mentioned.

[rodneyc8063_1]

Hi@lbendlin 

Thanks!

Sorry - I had to ask! Im just the messenger in this case 🙂