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CoulterJames2's avatar
CoulterJames2
Advocate II
7 months ago
Solved

External Report Sharing from Power BI Pro Workspace

I am trying to share a Power BI report to an external user. External sharing is enabled at tenant level. The user has been set up as a guest in our Entra ID directory and has a Power BI Pro licensed assigned which is from our tenant (the user does not have a Power BI Pro license in their own tenant).

 

The report is in a Pro workspace (not Premium/PPU/F) and the external user has been added to an Entra security group which has been added to the Viewer role on the Workspace. The user can log in to our Power BI tenant, but cannot see the report. I have gone through the article below and have followed the steps correctly. Any suggestions on what I could be missing here?

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/enterprise/powerbi/service-admin-entra-b2b

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  • CoulterJames2's avatar
    CoulterJames2
    7 months ago

    So it turns out that the report is visible to the external user, but not in our Power BI tenant. It shows up in their tenant under the "From external orgs" on their home page. This seems counter-intuitive to me, but in any case, the issue is resolved.

10 Replies

  • CoulterJames2's avatar
    CoulterJames2
    Advocate II
    7 months ago

    So it turns out that the report is visible to the external user, but not in our Power BI tenant. It shows up in their tenant under the "From external orgs" on their home page. This seems counter-intuitive to me, but in any case, the issue is resolved.

    • v-aatheeque's avatar
      v-aatheeque
      Community Support
      7 months ago

      Hi CoulterJames2 

      Thanks for the update and for confirming the behavior.

       

      This is expected behavior for B2B users. External users typically see shared content in their home tenant under From external orgs, rather than inside the host tenant workspace.

       

      Glad to hear the issue is now resolved.

      Please feel free to reach out if you run into any other questions or need further assistance.

  • Cookistador's avatar
    Cookistador
    Super User
    7 months ago

    Hi CoulterJames2 

    I faced this issue in the past for a few guest users, some of them have access but not all of them
    After a few investigations, we find that the issue was the user's account is missing a usage location. 

    Microsoft services need that specific field to be filled in to validate the license. It’s easy to miss because while your internal employees usually have this set up automatically, that field defaults to blank for new Guest users.

    If it is not that, can you try to assign the email address to the workspace instead of the group ?

    • CoulterJames2's avatar
      CoulterJames2
      Advocate II
      7 months ago

      I've checked in Entra ID and Usage Location is set to UK although the user is based in Ireland, though I'm not sure that would make a difference. The user type is set to "Guest" - I wonder if changing it to "Member" would have any effect? I'll try setting the email directly on the workspace first and see what happens.

      • CoulterJames2's avatar
        CoulterJames2
        Advocate II
        7 months ago

        OK I tried adding the user directly to the Viewer role on the workspace and that hasn't made a difference. I'm stumped.

  • Cookistador's avatar
    Cookistador
    Super User
    7 months ago

    Can you ask to the user how he is connecting to power bi?

    As it is a guess, if he uses powerbi.com, he will land on the tenant of his company 

     

    Can you make the following test with him:

    Look at the top right of the Power BI header.

    Click their Profile Icon.

    Is there a "Switch Directory" option?

    If yes, He needs to select your organization from that list.

     

    • CoulterJames2's avatar
      CoulterJames2
      Advocate II
      7 months ago

      Thanks, but we have already tried the tenant switch and that makes no difference.

      • v-aatheeque's avatar
        v-aatheeque
        Community Support
        7 months ago

        Hi  

        Since licensing is already correct (Pro workspace + Pro license assigned to the guest), the issue is most likely related to access propagation, tenant context, or content exposure. Please validate the following:

         

        • If possible, publish an App from the workspace and grant the guest access to the App.Ask the user to test using the App link.External users often have better reliability accessing content via Apps rather than browsing workspace content directly.
        • Confirm the guest has permission to the underlying dataset and is included in any required Row-Level Security (RLS) roles. If dataset permissions or RLS are missing, the report may not appear or may fail to load even if workspace access exists.
        • Verify that the tenant setting Allow Azure AD guest users to access Power BI is enabled and not restricted.

          Reference : Collaborate and share in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

           

          Hope this helps !!

          Thank You.

         

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