Is this Article Correct?

[Anonymous]

I've been testing Power BI Deployment Pipelines and am quite confused. I've had to upgrade my license to PPU just to unllock this functionality and my understanding after gooing through this (Quite long) process was that the pipeline I'd set up was useless because none all our other users are on Pro licenses only and to upgrade them all to PPU would immediately double our monthly cost to use this application.

This article though https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-new-viewer-role-for-power-bi-workspaces/ seems to say the opposite and that any user with viewer access to a workspace will be able to view dashboards and reports (Although not sets or flows). I've literally just tested this with a user who I've given viewer access to and they can see the workspace but get a message tsaying they need to upgrade to PPU to view it's reports and dashboards. I then tried sharing the dashboard with the user directly but they got the same message when trying to view in their shared with me folder.

Am I missing something or are Microsoft actively trying to misdirect me/Waste my time here in the interests of squeezing more money?

[edhans · Accepted solution]

No. that article pre-dates PPU, and it has nothing to do with licensing.

All PPU workspaces require the user have a PPU license. You cannot do PPU features then have Pro users access them, so that includes Deployment Pipelines and Paginated Reports for example. 

Roles and licensing are different. A PPU license gives you the rights to access a PPU workspace froma license standpoint. Once you are given permission to access it, then you are assigned one of four roles - Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer. It says how much a user is given access to, and Viewer is what you want most users to have, if that. Usually I just give them access to the Power BI App, but a Power BI App in a PPU workspace still needs the end user to have a PPU license.

[Anonymous]

OK, thanks. This is as I suspected. Possibly the most confused licensing and pricing model I've ever seen aside from Azure

[edhans]

Glad I could help @Anonymous 

If you think that is complex, try understanding Power Apps licensing...😂

[Anonymous]

Haha! That will probably be my next pain point as I'm looking at what we can do with Power Apps atm. As a developer, it's difficult because I'm not managing the costs specifically. I'm just really here to develop and I find that using D365 and Azure it's always the same story. Marketing copy makes it sound simple and easy and then once you've paid, that's when you find out about all the hidden pay walls and other unforseen barriers.

I wouldn't mind but the costing and procurement process is always long and arduous with m id to large organisations having to go through multiple chains of decision making and is not something I can just decide on there and then as a dev. It just often results in a lot of wasted time for me and that asrticle really confused me rather than clarified the situation!

Thanks again!