Forum Discussion
Fixes to Power BI Pro License Required Dialogs
This "fix" is very unfortunate and a huge deal-breaker for our company.
Like Bhartman30 - I too work in a company where a small amount of Pro-users (aprox. 5 developers) keep and maintain the dashboards/reports in a PowerBI group so that we can fill in for each other. But it was previously possible for all the end-users (currently aprox. 200 people) to view the final reports with free-licenses.
Now without prior warning all end-users has been locked out of the reports, and they suddenly require a Pro-license simply to view the reports. This is a huge stepback both for our current work-processes in the company, but also a stepback for our journey to furhter integrate PowerBI in the company.
Historically we have been using Tableau, but during the last year we have slowly moved towards Microsoft PowerBI due to a more attractive pricing model. Tableau costs 2.000$ per developer for a lifetime license, while PowerBI only cost 10$ pr. month per Pro-license. But with Tableau only the report developers need a license while all end-users can view reports free of charge.
Our hope was to expand the use of PowerBI from the current 200 end-users to about 2.000 end-users. The pricing argument is now all of the sudden no longer a valid argument for us to help push this PowerBI integration since it is now:
Tableau:
5 developers x 2.000$= 10.000$ (lifetime)
2.000 end-users x 0$ = 0$
PowerBI:
5 developers x 10$ = 50$ (per year)
2.000 end-users x 10$ = 20.000$ (per year)
If you were storing a report within a Group Workspace and/or allowing your report to connect to data sources using an On-Premises
Gateway, while the users consuming the report were users with free licenses, you were in direct conflict with the documentation.
I do not believe this is a setback, but rather a planning step that did not take place on the individual(s) that architected the solution.
Unfortunately in my experience with MS documentation and actuals, there are numerous direct conflicts.
In this case they could have just as easily changed the wording in the documentation and left the feature of Workspaces functioning with Free Licenses. However, they chose to remove a working feature that many people have been using. So in this case it is neither an architectural issue or a user issue, it is a decision by MS team to eliminate a functioning feature.
Have a great rest of your day!
I would love to see where the conflict was found within regards to this issue. Would you be willing to point it out?
The problem is not "Workspaces" in general, but with Group Workspaces. The content within a Group Workspace is and has been, clearly defined as a Pro feature all along.
The individual architecting the solution needs to clear those items before creating a solution of any size.
A Free user consuming content from within a Group Workspace is a clear, very clear violation of the documentation.
Thoughts?
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-power-bi-pro-content-what-is-it/
Power BI Pro content - what is it?
Power BI free and Pro licenses are different based on the kind of content users can consume. If your content contains any of the following items, it's Power BI Pro content:
Data from a DirectQuery dataset, such as SQL Server Analysis Services tabular data, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, or Apache Spark for HDInsight.
Data from a dataset that refreshes more frequently than daily.
Data from a dataset that connects to on-premises data using the Power BI Gateway - Personal or the On-premises Data Gateway.
Data from a live connection to Azure Analysis Services.
Data (including reports, dashboards or tiles) from a dataset that uses Row-level security (RLS).
A dashboard or report that's installed from an organizational content pack.
A dashboard, report, or dataset that's contained in a group workspace.
A dashboard that contains data streamed at a rate above 10k rows/hour.
Conversely, if your content contains only the following items it will be consumable by both Power BI free and Pro users:
A dashboard or report connected to content packs for services (e.g. Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, and Google Analytics).
A dashboard or report with data imported from files such as Excel spreadsheets, Power BI Desktop, and CSV.
Tiles pinned from a report in SQL Server Reporting Services.
For example, if you create a manufacturing dashboard that updates progress multiple times during the day, anyone consuming that dashboard would need a Power BI Pro license. Or, if you create a report using the Power BI Gateway - Enterprise, then another that uses the personal gateway, anyone consuming or interacting with either of those reports would need a Power BI Pro license.
If you want to share your Power BI Pro content with users, they can sign up for a free trial of Power BI Pro, and gain access to your content during the trial period.
For a list of Power BI Pro features (and how those features compare to a free Power BI license), take a look at Power BI Pricing.
