May 3 announcement FAQ

[MiguelMartinez]

Today we announced changes to Power BI Pro and the free service effective June 1, as well as the availability of an extended Power BI Pro trial offer. Please refer to our free Power BI service changes board for more information.

This discussion board contains a set of frequently asked questions. Please share your comments and additional questions.

• What capabilities are being added to the free service?

Beginning June 1, the free service will have capabilities equivalent to Power BI Pro. This includes the same 1 GB workbook size limit, up to 8 daily scheduled refreshes for datasets, and maximum 1 million rows/hour streaming data rate. We’re also providing access to all data sources, including those available through the on-premises data gateway.

• Which Power BI Pro capabilities are not available with the free service?

Peer-to-peer dashboard sharing, group workspaces (now called app workspaces), and analyze in Excel with Power BI apps are capabilities limited to Power BI Pro.  

• When will these changes go into effect?

Changes to the free service will go into effect on June 1.

• Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?

No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.

• How do I know if I’m eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?

Please refer to the extended Power BI Pro trial terms and conditions.

• What should I do if I’m not eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial?

Sign up for a standard 60-day Power BI Pro trial.

• I’m currently taking advantage of the standard 60-day Power BI Pro trial – will I also be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial when it becomes available on June 1?

Power BI Pro trial users will be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial offer as long as they registered for the free service on or before May 2.

• How do I accept the extended Power BI Pro trial offer?

Sign in to the Power BI service any time on or after June 1 and follow the prompts to register for the extended Power BI Pro trial.

• Does the introduction of Power BI Premium change the capabilities of the free service?

Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users.

• Are any changes being made to Power BI Pro?

No changes are being made to Power BI Pro.

• Are any changes being made to Power BI Desktop?

No changes are being made to Power BI Desktop.

[Bjorn]

What about the embedded PBI webpart in Sharepoint 'new experience' pages? In the current preview release, all consumers of the page need Pro licenses. Will this feature be Free starting June 1 or still Pro?

[shanemr18]

How will these changes impact the incoming "embed to sharepoint" (using the PowerBI Webpart)?

[shanemr18]

What about if I've used "publish to web" to share content (i.e. embedded the report in a webpage). What's the impact on how this now works for both free and pro licenced users?

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @shanemr18,

Like I told @joshmwolff, users of the free Power BI service will continue to have the ability to use Publish to Web. That means that any reports and embedded codes will still work.

[SourceToShare]

Hey Power BI people!  I see from the FAQ that 

"Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in Power BI Premium will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users"

Is that also the case for content distributed by pro users using on-prem analysis services.  In other words, is this also true:

Users of the free service with access to dedicated capacity in on-prem Analysis Services will have the ability to receive content distributed to them by Power BI Pro users

Thanks,

Derek

[MiguelMartinez]

Hey @SourceToShare,

Publishing Power BI reports on-premises with Power BI Report Server requires a Power BI Pro license. Additional per user licenses are not required to consume Power BI reports hosted on Power BI Report Server. You can find more information here

[SourceToShare]

Hi @MiguelMartinez.  Thanks for taking a stab at my question.  Sorry, I wasn't clear, although that did answer another question I had.  

Anyway, I'm curious if Pro user content can be shared to a free user if the content is using an live Analysis Services instance on-prem (not a PBI Reporting Server). 

Thanks,

Derek

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi again @SourceToShare,

You are more than welcome. We are here to help 😄

Now, if I'm understanding your question correctly, a Power BI Pro user would be able to distribute content - including content using Analysis Services - if the content is published to Power BI Premium capacity workspace and share that with a free user that is also part of that Power BI Premium capacity instance.

That was my complicated version of saying yes, you can 🙂

[kbl1726]

Will Power BI embedded pricing remain in place, even though it is being merged with Premium? Becuase as a small business, we can't afford $5k for a single node each month to service a dozen or two clients (external users) who don't need editing, particularly when embedded would cost us less than 10% of that.  And becuase you've removed the ability to view a shared dashboard using Free, all would have to upgrade to Pro.  The issue here is not that the 10$ per month, I would cover that if I could.  But it is utterly unprofessional to ask clients to go through the hassle of signing up for a paid service just to access my service and have me send them a reimbursement check.  Furthermore, there's no simple way to onboard them into my account as they are all external users with thier own corporate accounts, policies, etc. The nice thing with the previous embedded is that they could login to my website, where they already had an account, to view their dashboard. Please tell me I'm misreading something.  Otherwise you've squeezed out a large number of small businesses.  

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @kbl1726,

We will be introducing additional SKUs for Power BI Premium that target embedded scenarios. While we aren’t disclosing details at this time, our approach is to add further pricing flexibility for embedded scenarios based on the needs of organizations building apps and their customers consuming them. Also, since recipients consuming content embedded in apps are licensed within Power BI Premium, they wouldn’t need to be licensed individually per user.

[joshmwolff]

Thanks for this FAQ. What about reports I've uploaded to PowerBI service and then published to web? Will the embed codes cease to work after June 1? 

[MiguelMartinez]

Hey @joshmwolff,

Users of the free Power BI service will continue to have the ability to use Publish to Web. That means that any reports and embedded codes will still work.

[TezzaX]

HI..  I currently provide dashboards to a number of free users within our business..  If I become a power user, will I be able to continue to share these dashboards with free users through the publish to Power BI service?  

OR will anyone who wishes to see my dashboards within my business also need to have a Power BI subscription??  

Or will I need to have a premium subscription which seems to be extremely expensive to service a small group of dashboard users within a single organisation!!!!!!

This change to the free service wreaks of money grabbing!!!

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @TezzaX,

Beginning June 1 distribution and sharing will be capabilities limited to Power BI Pro users. Equally, consuming content shared by others will also require a Power BI Pro license. You - and other users of the free service within your organization - may be eligible for the extended 12 month free trial of Power BI Pro. Power BI Premium would be another option for you once it becomes generally available later this quarter. You can visit our calculator to explore what might be best for you.

[shanemr18]

Awesome news! Panic attack over!! 🤓

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @shanemr18 and @Bjorn,

Sharepoint embedding to SharePoint doesn't change that much from its original licensing needs. You will basically have 2 scenarios now (one included with Power BI Premium):

1. As we communicated in the preview announcement: "The Power BI report web part requires all the viewers to have a Power BI Pro license. If your users don’t have a Pro license, they’ll be directed to PowerBI.com where they can enroll or start a Pro trial".

2. If the if the user that is trying to consume the embedded report does not have a Power BI Pro license but is part of a Power BI Premium instance, same viewer rights apply meaning that the user can view the report but collaboration features such as Analyze from Excel are not available, in line with regular Power BI Premium related features.

Both cases assume users embedding and consuming have SPO licenses.

[masplin]

We very recently started using power BI to share in a small orgnaisation (10 users). Several of the users clicked the pro trial button despite us not having made any use of the pro functions.  As far as I can tell several of our users will now be inelligable for a trial, when we have to actually use the Pro features to share dashboards.  This seems inhenernetly unfair to be slapped with a significant bill when we haven't even got started on whether this is a good solution.  I'm sure this goes for many people who took up the pro trial, but have never needed to use it. This is a fundamental change to the relationship between free/pro so  you shouldn't be inelligable for having had a trial under the old regime.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @masplin,

As long as your users meet the terms and conditions here, they will be eligible for the extended Power BI Pro trial even if they've previously used the standard 60-day trial.

[freswood]

Hi Miguel, in that case would it be possible to update the Exclusions in the T&C to reflect this? It appears to be contradictory.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi again @freswood,

Done 😄

[jester121]

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• Will I lose access to my content (dashboards, reports) at that time?

No. You will not lose access to any content you’ve uploaded to the Power BI service. Content you’ve shared with others may no longer be accessible by recipients on June 1. Likewise, at that time you may no longer have access to content others have shared with you. Existing users of the free service who have been active within the past year can take advantage of the free 12-month extended trial of Power BI Pro. The offer will deliver the full capabilities of Power BI Pro to ensure you have the appropriate time to adjust how you use the service.

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All our Power BI users have E3 licenses, so we still be getting screwed out of the ability to share dashboards among our users? 

Microsoft, this is absolute garbage -- taking away something that's been included in our licensing, and now we have to figure out the budget impact of pro licenses (like who needs them?) Absolute BS.