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.

[Anonymous]

I'm a little unclear how Premium and Pro will be expected to mix going forward.

Our business is sizable, and its possible we would grow to 500 Pro liceneses eventually (in the previous model).  Presently we have only a fairly small number of users who actively create shared content.  Some of the managers in the business are going to be encouraged to use it personally, but nothing they would share.

My expectation is that our business might have 20 or fewer report collaborators and maybe 1000 users who consume the reports.  If we were to use Power BI prevmium, are we expected to buy 20 Pro Licenses then on top of this pay the 5,000 for Premium so that the 1000 users could view those reports, or do we just pay the 5000 for Premium and we have the ability to allocate special rights to those 20 people included in the 5k cost?

I've looked at the calculator and it gave me the impression that the 5K covers "viewers" and the pro licenses were needed on top for creators.

[MiguelMartinez]

Power BI Pro licenses would be required for users publishing reports, sharing dashboards, collaborating with colleagues in workspaces and engaging in other related activities. Power BI Premium would enable those Pro users to distribute content without recipients being licensed individually.

[djnww]

Hi @MiguelMartinez,

Is it a 'MUST' for a whole organisation to be on PREMIUM ? Many Government Organisations have multiple Departments, but all under the same tenancy. However, each department is independent of each other. Can a single department choose to be on PREMIUM ? I'm not sure how it would work with licensing distribution.

For example, an entire State has signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement all under the same tenancy for 250,000 users. However, each Department functions independently. You have the Department of Finance, Department of Public Transport etc. Can the department of Finance go PREMIUM even though the tenancy is owned and managed by the State Government ? Or does the State Government have to go PREMIUM for the whole State ?

D

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @djnww,

There may be specific requirements in the context of a government organization. But, in general, capacity in Power BI Premium can be applied to a specific set of users (e.g. team, department) or applied broadly across the organization - this happens by assigning users to workspaces in the dedicated capacity allocated to an organization as part of Power BI Premium. The only caveat is that for now, the IT admin for the tenant needs to do the initial purchase. 

[jimbobTX]

Um...what's Power BI PREMIUM? First I've seen of this.

[dsynan]

From what i've seen it was announced today. Seems like a good thing in the long-term, however less than a month's notice that changes for free users will be going into effect is no bueno.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @jimbobTX,

We announced Power BI Premium this morning on website and blog.

You can find more info and resources in the announcement blog post and on the Power BI website premium page.

[Anonymous]

Can you provide a little bit of clarification around the sharing? I understand that a "free" user will not be able to share with others.

If I am a "Pro" user, can I share my dashboards with "Free" users? In our organization, there are really two types of individuals, Report Writers and Report Consumers. It would not make sense for us to pay for Pro licenses just for the users that we would be viewing some of the reports that we are putting together since they would not be using any of the other features of a pro license.

Nick

[MiguelMartinez]

That’s correct @Anonymous, as we announced this morning Power BI Premium tackles that issue. We have a calculator that can help organizations figure out which option makes sense depending on their mix of Pro Users and readers. Depending on size and usage, the solution might be different.

[bart_vermeersch]

The Power BI Premium can or must be payed using Azure credits or is it separate?

[dsynan]

If I have a PRO license and have been sharing dashboards with Free users, will those free users no longer be able to access the dashboards that I shared with them as a PRO user? Put another way, going forward on June 1, is the only way to see a dashboard someone else created and shared is to have a PRO license?

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@dsynan The free users will need to sign up for the Pro Trail.

To answer the second question. There are now two ways they can see it. One, the end users have a Pro license/Trial (As mentioned above). Or, the person sharing the content has a premium license on top of the Pro license, then the end users will be able to see the dashboards as free users.

[PowerBIUser123]

So, if I understood you correctly, if a Pro license user wants to share a dashboard with another person, that person will have to have Premium or Pro licenses to view it.
And if the a Pro license user has a Premium license on top of it, he (or she) can share content with Free license users.
Could yo please confirm it?

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @PowerBIUser123,

Beginning June 1 dashboard sharing (and the ability to consume shared content) will be limited to Power BI Pro users. When Power BI Premium becomes generally available late this quarter, a Power BI Pro user publishing to Premium capacity will be able to make that content available to users who aren't individually licensed but are part of the Premium Capacity. 

[richbenmintz]

I cannot believe that Microsoft will be deprecating the current incarnation of power bi embedded with a migration plan that includes a minimum spend of $5000 per month on power bi premium! I work for a small company that simply cannot afford to pay $60,000 USD a year for an embedded platform. Can someone please explain how the minimum spent for power bi premium is $60,000 USD a year. I totally understand that large organizations complained that user based licensing got very expensive, but why is Microsoft not considering the SME in the Premium plan especially if embedded is being migrated to this licensing scheme.

[RichardV]

Please provide us with answers. I work for a small company as well, and aan important reason we stepped over to Microsoft is the Power BI embedded service. However, we can't pay 60.000 dollar pear year for this. Then we will have to quit with Microsoft.

Why can't the Power BI embedded service stay as it is???

It is really outregious, and we feel cheated if Power BI embedded will only be available with Power BI premium. Please let the Power BI Embedded licensing model as it is.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@RichardV@richbenmintz If you follow the main thread, @MiguelMartinez explained this there, but here is his response:

"The existing Power BI Embedded service will continue to be available for at least 12 months, and you can read more here.

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."

[kbl1726]

So, free users now need a Pro account to view shared dashboards.  

Power BI Embedded is being merged with Power BI premium.  The Premium capacity calculator shows that a single node starts at $4,995 per month.  Is the existing Power BI Embedded pricing model, $5 per 100 sessions, going away too?  Because if so, you may have just scared off a ton on small businesses.

I'm developing a dashboard to share with a handful of clients (external), up to 100 ideally.  None of them need editing capabilties or data access. As of now I can share that with each of them and they can view it for free as long as they have a free Power BI account.  That is good for me price wise, but a bit unprofessional it requires a Microsoft account and Microsoft login.  So I'm willing to pay for embedded, becuase it might cost me $100-200/month to have the dash/reports embedded in my current website.  Much more professional and the cost is manageable.  

But now there are two issues I see.  If I share the dash, they have to login through Microsoft and pay $10 per month.  That is a no go.  Even if I were willing to pay the cost for them, which I would be, there is no way for me to manage their accounts to do so and the whole thing would be very unprofessional.  If the embedded pricing model changes, I'll have to pay $5k per month for premium so that I can embed my own webapp to share with a few clients.  This would kill my business.  

Please tell me I am misreading something or that the Power BI embedded pricing model will remain.  Otherwise, there is simply no feasible, economic solution to share with a handful of external users.  I'll have to find another BI service.  Furthermore, in any case, the constant changes to pricing models creates great uncertainty about building a product with Power BI knowing that I, as a small business, could be quickly priced out.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi again @kbl1726,

Beginning June 1 users consuming shared content will need a Power BI Pro license, or they can be licensed by capacity as part of Power BI Premium when it becomes available late this quarter. 

The existing Power BI Embedded service will continue to be available for at least 12 months, and you can read more here.

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.

[kbl1726]

I truly hope you reveal the additional SKUs soon becuase the current all-or-nothing pricing scheme for Premium prices out all but large enterprises.  

When you say the current embedded pricing will be be available for another 12 months, does this mean new users can sign up for this SKU for the next 12 months or will it only be available for 12 months for current, already in-place embedded customers? The article you linked suggests the latter.  And what happens when you finally revoke the plan fully?  

The embedded SKU was great becuase it was scalable to most use cases and enabled small businesses to get into Power BI without massive overhead - I thought that was the point of it and Microsoft's plan to disrupt Tableau and other BI service providers.  Until you release info on the new SKUs, there is absolutely no scaling in your new pricing scheme for client facing services. I've already reached out to Qlik and Tableau to get more info on their options.  (I really have, I'm not saying this to be dramatic.  As someone planning to launch a client-facing, read-only Power BI service in the coming weeks I now have to reevaluate my entire business model, particularly if you are taking away the ability for new signups to the existing embedded SKU at $5 per 100 sessions.)

[MiguelMartinez]

Hey @kbl1726

Power BI Embedded will continue to be available for existing apps for a minimum of 12 months – it may be longer depending upon the nature of your licensing agreement. For example, if you have an enterprise agreement (EA), Power BI Embedded will be available until the expiration of your existing agreement. After that time apps will need to be migrated to Power BI and licensed through Power BI Premium