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

[myhome]

Dear all, I want to know if the embedding feature can be used with just my Pro licenses (I don't have free users in my scenario) with no need to buy the Premium.

Thank you, Antonio

[Anonymous]

This is sort of upsetting because I signed up for Power Bi awhile back. But just activated the 60-day pro free trial about 27 days ago, which should have allowed me to get the free year since it was already past June... Any recommendations on how to get the free year trial? Or if there might have been an issue administering the notifications to different users? 

[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.

[mim]

@MiguelMartinez I am afraid this is a very bad news for our use case, I am very angry and disappointed by this change, basically Microsoft used us as a beta testers for PowerBI, until it become mature and then suddenly removed features from the free tier using the excuse that it was confusing, this is a blatant bait and switch tactic. 

so basically microsoft can change the license as they want, what I learned from this experience, when you move to the cloud you are at the mercy of the vendor, 

[Camilla91]

Some collegues of mine and I are Pro User within my organization and we're using Office365 with E3 subscription. My question is: will we still be able to use PowerBI Pro without PowerBI Premium or will we need to purchase that?

Thank you

[mschwit]

Will Row Level Security also be able to used for Power BI Free users? Would be great to get a feedback for that as I did not find something regarding Row Level Security in the announcement.

[mukul111]

Hello,

I have concern regarding the Reports sharing to our clients as my organization has published a few reports to its customers (out of the organization) using the sharepoint online. We have used "Publish to web" feature of the Power BI Reports.

1. Will that feature be available in future for free or part of Power BI Pro trail services?

2. Later to May, 2018 will i be able to use the  "Publish to Web" feature and the consumers have access to the content like earlier or we both will have to upgrade to the Power BI Premium services?

[francorg]

The most impacted will be small groups/SMBs with less than 50 people.
The previous licensing costs of PBI were too good to last... with just 1 Pro license you could share reports and dashboard on PC and mobile devices with the colleagues.

PBI Premium is out of budget starting at more than 4K/month.

At the end SMBs will have to pay PBI Pro license for every user, which at 100€/year is not that much if you compare with other BI solutions and consider the features you get, but it will be a 50x increase of the BI budget.

It was too good to be true... and I can understand the with the old licensing model Microsoft was losing/investing a lot of money.

[Boj]

Peer-to-peer dashboard sharing on free service...gone too soon

[vvnboaz]

All users in our organization have O365 License.We are using Dynamics  365 (CRM) Right now all our users can able to view the Power BI Content. What will happen after June 1st should we need to buy a pro license or O365/Dynamics User license is enough for View purpose ?

[vvnboaz]

All users in our organization have O365 License. We are using Dynamics  365 (CRM)

Right now all our users can able to view the Power BI Content. What will happen after June 1st should we need to buy a pro license ? or O365/Dynamics license is enough for View purpose ?

[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)?