Forum Discussion
Individual authorization for refreshing a report
Hi Do57792
To allow your colleague to view and refresh only specific reports without giving access to the entire workspace, you have a couple of practical options. Power BI does not currently support folder-level permissions or fine-grained access within a single workspace. Instead, you can publish the required report to a separate workspace where your colleague is granted access (Viewer for view-only or Contributor for refresh capability). Alternatively, you can share the report directly from the Power BI Service using the "Share" feature this gives them access only to that report, not the full workspace.
However, for dataset refresh, they will need Build permission on the dataset and appropriate access to the underlying data source. A third option is to use a Power BI App, which allows you to bundle specific reports and securely share them with individual users, providing a curated experience without exposing other workspace content.
Hi Do57792
In Microsoft Fabric (and Power BI), workspace-level access is the primary model for managing permissions, which unfortunately means there is no native folder-level access control or the ability to assign permissions to individual reports within a workspace. If you want to allow a colleague to view or refresh only specific reports, without granting them access to the rest of the workspace content, you have two main alternatives:
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Use a Separate Workspace: The most straightforward and secure approach is to publish the reports intended for that colleague into a separate workspace, where they can be granted Viewer or Contributor access. This keeps their access limited to only those reports, without exposing other content.
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Use Power BI Apps for Controlled Sharing: You can publish selected reports or dashboards as a Power BI app from the main workspace. Then, assign access to that app only to the intended user. Apps allow you to bundle specific reports and control who can see them, without giving access to the full workspace. Note that users with access to the app cannot edit the reports, but they can view and refresh the data (if dataset permissions and underlying data sources allow it).
Currently, Power BI and Fabric do not support folder structures within workspaces or fine-grained report-level permissions inside a single workspace. So, the best practices are either segregating content via separate workspaces or using apps for curated sharing experiences.