Licensing

[Anonymous]

Hi Power BI users/admins,

I am wirting here in the hope to find an advice on how to set up a Power BI in a small company ( from 5 to 10 employees) which just started using Power BI.

Number of users and company size:

# 1 Person creates the Reports/Dashboards and runs the administration of it => which would be me

# 5-10 Persons are just users of the provided Reports/Dashboards. They are employees of the company, but need only viewing rights to the published Reports/Dashboards

As I understood the Microsoft Documentation and the information available online, maybe the most efficient way would be to subscribe to a Premium per User Licence.

Datasources:

# Localy saved Excel files which are connected to Power BI (this is just a temporary solution since I am migrating it to a Microsoft Database which I am buliding in SQL SMS)

# In the future the Datasource will be the Azure Cloud (which will store data from the Website instead archiving it localy in form of Excel or SQL Database)

Datasize:

# currently for one Fiscal Year arround 20 k rows, and will go up to a max of 200k rows for a period of 7 Fiscal Years

# the Dashboards that I've already created are not bigger than 10MB

Previouse Experiences:

# I have experience as a Dashboard Developer with Tableau but not as an Administrator or in Implementation of a BI Services

Task/Goal:

# To set up Power BI with the existing data sources ( Excel & SQL Database) and to prepare it for the migration to Azure Cloud.

Thank you in advance and I am looking forward to your replies!

Regards,

Mirza

[Anonymous]

Hi @Burningsuit,

thank you for your quick reply and sorry for my late response!

Your reply was very helpful, but I got a follow up question, since I was reading more about pricing and different licences with Power BI.

I would need Premium because I need the functionality of the hybrid tables feature with Premium, but as it comes to the other viewers in the company, I am not clear about the following:

1. Is it possible to create reports as a "Premium per User Licence" user and share them to the other users without them having a licence at all, containing only "Free Licence" features, so that they can use the report without subscribing to a licence?

Thank you in advance!

Regards,

Mirza

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

No, "Premium Per User" (PPU) licences have many of the benefits of "Premium Capacity" but does NOT allow sharing to "Free" power BI licences. Reports on a PPU Workspace can only be shared with other PPU licences.

"Premium Capacity" is the only licence that allows sharing with "Free" users.

Hope this helps

Stuart

[Burningsuit]

Hi @Anonymous 

From what you've written, you'll need between 6 to 11 licences probably Power BI Pro. 

The issue with Power BI is that if you want to securely share Reports and Dashboards with users at this level, then each user needs a Power BI licence to view and interact with the content shared with them. 

You as the developer will need a Pro licence to create Reports and Dashboards, it's unlikely you'll need a Premium Per User (PPU) licence unless you have specific requirements or your data grows much larger. When you share those reports with others they will need a Power BI Pro licence to view and interact with them securely. (If you had a Premium Per User licence and used PPU facilities they would each need PPU licences.)

You can start with a Pro trial licence for 60 days before starting a monthly subscription, use this time to create a "proof of concept" and share it with others in your organisation who have a Pro trial licence. Then as you begin to see the benefits, you can purchase additional licences as required. The monthly subscription and trial licences mean you can start small and grow as the need arises. If you need a budget figure for the year plan on needing  a Pro licence for each person who needs to view and interact with a Report or Dashboard.

see: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/pricing/

Hope this helps

Stuart