Difference between Read vs Viewer Permission in Power bi

[Capitalmale]

A saw a thread marked as solved about the "Difference between Read permissions and Viewer Permission is Power bi". However, the response did not match with my experience.

I am an administrator of workspace with 15 or so reports. If I add someone to the workgroup, I can grant them permission as "Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer"

If I want someone to be able to access only one of the reports, I use the "manager permission" option at report level and "Add User".  The two people added via this method were marked with Permission as "Read". 

Which leads back to the originial questions - what is the difference in the experience of each with the specific report? I am lead to beliveve that there is no difference. Both only have read-only access but can experience all the interactivity built into the report.

Am I correct in concluding that:

Some marked "Read" has been granted read only access one (or more) report within the workspace

Some marked "Viewer" is someone who has been granted read only access to the entire workspace.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Capitalmale ,

For Viewer, it’s a workspace role, when you add a person to the workspace access with Viewer role, he can access this workspace and then only view and interact with all content in this workspace, such as reports.

For more details, you can read related document: Roles in the new workspaces in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs , Give users access to the new workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

For Read permission, it’s used for sharing specific reports , user can only view and interact the shared report, cannot access the corresponding workspace if doesn’t have workspace role.

Best regards,
Community Support Team_ Binbin Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[edhans]

A Viewer is a role, and that viewer has read permissions.

The difference is a Contributor is also a role, and has read/write permissions to their content but read permissions to other content.

So when you share a report with someone, you are giving them a level of permissions, read, read/write, etc. Not a role. 

Make sense?