Data source to allow refresh from Power BI Desktop and Power BI Online

[kcrawford_eda]

I work for a company where I am the only Power BI developer. I and a few executives have Power BI Pro to utilize live data connections for reports, however most of my users view reports from Power BI Desktop. 

What is the best way to configure my data source (an excel file querying from a variety of others) so that other users can refresh from Power BI Desktop and the automatic refresh in Power BI online will remain intact?

Until this point, I just encouraged others to try out the Power BI Pro trial. However, the more accessibility I can give to insights > the better the value of the report itself.

[v-karpurapud]

Hi @kcrawford_eda 
Hope you are doing well!

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. If my response has addressed your query, please accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it.

Thank you.

[v-karpurapud]

Hi @kcrawford_eda 

May I ask if you have resolved this issue? If so, please mark the helpful reply and accept it as the solution. This will be helpful for other community members who have similar problems to solve it faster.

Thank you.

[v-karpurapud]

Hi @kcrawford_eda 

Thank you @Tutu_in_YYC for your prompt response.

Could you please confirm if your query have been resolved the solution provided by @Tutu_in_YYC ? If they have, kindly mark the helpful response and accept it as the solution. This will assist other community members in resolving similar issues more efficiently.

Thank you

[Tutu_in_YYC · Accepted solution]

If the users want to refresh from Power BI desktop, they will need access to the data source ie your excel file. Best is to host the excel file on sharepoint, give them read permission of the excel file and you create a power bi report that connects to the excel file. When they open up the report, they do need to input their credential to be able to refresh the report.

For the one in power bi service, you can just use your credential to set up the scheduled refresh.

That said, power bi desktop is meant for development. Consumption should happen in the portal, but it is pretty common for new organization to not do that yet until they see the value. One thing for sure, once you move into the portal, everybody will need to have a paid license, but thats the cost of having a secured BI and data governance.

[kcrawford_eda]

I appreciate your response. I'm hoping I've kinda resolved the issue via what you've mentioned above. One maybe-roadbump I've hit is - to get all the data in one place (for my own peace of mind and simplifying permissions), I'm utilizing Power Query, which doesn't want to refresh automatically while the file is closed. Which wasn't an issue when someone was constantly in the file with live data. But I have no need for the "master" file to be open constantly on my computer. 

I'm waiting on a user to test the new data source location and I'm hoping that putting the data source in a shared SharePoint folder works. However, I do completely agree that they shouldn't be refreshing from Power BI Desktop either way. My org is getting closer to the point of getting more paid licenses. I'm just trying to find a solution to make the report accessible until that happens. Especially for the ones maintaining their live data, it's hard to get them to care about the quality when it's a struggle to utilize the resource I've created with it. 

[Tutu_in_YYC]

For this to work, the pbix file (power bi desktop file) that the users are using are the same as yours ie contains the same power query transformation, so they can refresh and run the same transformation.

Another option is for them to just have the report (wihout power query component of it, we refer to it a Thin Report), and connect to the semantic model that you manage and refresh in power bi service. But this might require paid license, even though the users are connecting from power bi desktop.