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.

[JasonBSteele]

Hi, I'm new to PowerBI and I'm trying to work out the pricing for my SME.

If I have 60 report viewers and 5 report creators then I undrstand that I will need 5 Power BI Pro accounts.

However, purchasing a Power BI Premium account is prohibitively expensive so I would consider one of the cheaper Embedded SKUs instead.

Is this permissable within the licencing rules? What do I lose by not buying Premium (apart from a larger server)?

Many thanks

[Anonymous]

I am not exactly sure why the same question continues to be asked, and answered in different ways on the message board.

I have a Power BI Pro license, and create dashboards for use in my organization.  Those individuals that are consuming the reports use their organizational credentials to access the dashboards (but are not pro users) though Office 365.

Can I expect that they will be able to continue to consume the existing/new dashboards I create, without having a Pro license?

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @Anonymous,

Sorry if the answers have not tackled your question about free users. As you can see, the FAQ does not mention Office 365 licenses or users at all and that is by the design: all Power BI permissions and features for Pro and Free users are defined by a Power BI license, not an Office 365 one.

This means, and to answer your question more specifically, if the users you're sharing dashboards and reports with today do not have a Pro license, they will need one on June 1st to do so. It doesn't matter if they are Office 365 users or not.

Free users, beginning June 1^st , can take advantage of the extended Pro trial to continue accessing the content. After the extended trial expires, users will need a Pro license to maintain access.

Terms and conditions for the extended trial can be found here.

[vvnboaz]

Should we need to get the Power BI Pro Licence for Dynamic 365 User too? Only to View the Power BI Pro content.

All the user in our organization have O365 license.

[KenGoodwin]

Is there a way of telling how many of my users are actually using Power BI?  I can see how many have licenses assigned but I can't really tell which ones are actively using it.  Office 365 audit log search just shows free Power BI users as "Free User", so I can't see how many licenses I'm going to need to purchase.

[osoosh]

Massive change for free users such as small businesses which I've been refering them to use Power BI as the best option in the market. Not sure where the power bi team had their feedback from (I suspect the internal people of commercial) to do this change only in giving a month notice (poor). 

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @osoosh,

Existing users of the free Power BI service may be eligible for the extended 12 month free trial of Power BI Pro - see here for more information.

[freswood]

Today I received an email regarding the new changes. In the email it says:

If you’re interested in an extended Power BI Pro trial that will run from 1 June 2017, to 31 May 2018, simply sign in as normal on or after 1 June 2017, and get going. Contact us to learn more about Power BI Pro.

I'm currently on a free 2 month Pro trial. In the T&C for the extended Pro trial it says:

• Eligibility: Users who registered for the free Power BI service on or before May 2, 2017 and have signed into the service at least once between May 2, 2016 and May 2, 2017 are eligible for the Offer.
• Exclusions: Power BI Pro and Power BI Pro trial users are not eligible for the Offer.

Could you please help clarify whether I'm eligible for the extended Pro trial? I assumed that since I received a targeted email inviting me to extend the trial that I would be eligible. However according to the T&C it sounds like I'm not.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @freswood,

Thanks for asking this question. We needed to go back and make sure our T&C would cover this. The answer is 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. Please refer back to the extended Power BI Pro trial terms and conditions.

[pmdci]

About Power BI Premium, I'd like a few clarifications.

• Moving forward Power BI Premium will be the way for us to get Power BI functionality embedded into our SaaS applications, right?
• I read that Power BI Premium will have support for on-premise gateway, which has been promised for months for Power BI Embedded. I am assuming that while existing Power BI Embedded deployments will keep being supported, this does not mean that will get support for on-premise data, since Microsoft would expect us to move to Power BI Premium.
  
  
• I did a calculation using the pricing calculator and the SKU for Power BI Premium starts at ALMOST 5,000 (five thousand) dollars a month -- which is a significant increase (I'd say prohibitive) when comparing to Power BI Embedded.
  
  
• So to sum up (and please correct me if I am wrong), for those of us who have been waiting over a year to get Power BI Embedded finally working with on-premise data, am I right to say that if we want such feature moving forward, we will have to get into Power BI Premium paying at least 5,000 (FIVE THOUSAND) dollars a month (give or take)?

[MiguelMartinez]

Hello @pmdci,

Yes, embedding Power BI in apps will be licensed through Power BI Premium moving forward. Support for on-premises data will be available as part of Power BI Premium. Note 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.

[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.