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]

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? 

[John4Roberta]

I have done a quick calculation of the cost impact at our organisation.

The price increase with the new regime is 5,567% increase or 56.7 times increase in cost. It puts it now at the level of the cost of employee a member of staff.

This is a show stopper.

[berdelyi]

Hi, 

I have used the calculator for the following:

2 pro users (pro account), 8 frequent users (free account) = $5,015/month

if I change it to 10 pro users (pro account) = $5,095/month

Pro users can: Users requiring collaboration, data modelling, content authoring, dashboard, sharing, ad hoc analysis, and report publishing.

Based on this my understanding was if I have 10 pro accounts they can collaborate with each other without the Power BI Premium Report Server subscription. That would bring down the monthly cost to 10 x $9,9 = $99/month. This is a huge difference between the two costs structure.

If the first case is true, if two people want to share and consume dashboards with each other they still need to pay $4,995/month instead of $20/month.

Please clarify my issue. 

Thanks,

Bence

[Rvn86]

Hi.

Will this change also disable users to embed dashboards/reports in a Dynamics 365 operations dashboard? Do users of D365 Operations need a Pro-license to view embedded dashboards in D356O? 

Thanks.

[vinodhini]

Hi.,

I am new to Power BI service .Activated 60 days PRO trial today.But My collegues has PRO access for 12 months since they are using for a long time.

Am I eligible to avail this 12 months PRO access , once my 60 day trial period got expire?..

If not is there any way to extend my trial period?

[yberllan]

Guys, It is just MAD! that we have to buy a Power BI lience for people to view a dashboard on SharePoint or Mobile App. A dashboard is the output from someone creating a report. We would not expect people to be able to edit the dashboard. Why oh why do we have to buy a liecnce? It is just crazy 

[sv248]

I'm really disappointed and very unhappy with the changes to the free service. With only a months notice.
I thought the ability to have a free BI service and share free dashboards was an incredible feature. I was really proud of Microsoft for providing this feature.
I'm a member of a small team that Power BI has benefited in being able to create reports more efficiently and then share them to my team at a reasonable cost...free.

Months of labour, learning a new tool and creating dashboards to make life easier for my team to view my monthly reports has just come to nothing. I'm really annoyed that I can't share my reports anymore.

With a payment of £3,100 a month for the Power BI Premium is over the top when all it does is pay for people to view a dashboard.

I kindly request Microsoft keep the ability to share the URL to view a dashboard for free.

[OleksiyPro]

we are using projet online with powerbi from august 2016. in may 2017 we bought office365 business essentials. on the 3rd of June we got info about 60-days powerbi pro extensions.

so, questions - have we the right to have power bi trial for one year?

[MC]

Hi,

Is there a way we can contact a sales representative to see how we can get the most out of power Bi Pro.- I'm based in France.

Thanks,

[jat75]

Hello and thanks for the additional info.

Question - if users sign up for the 60-day Power BI Pro trial either before or after June 1st, will they still be able to request a 60-day extension to the trial? The project that we're evaluating Power BI with has an uncertain timeframe concerning the rollout, and we wouldn't want users to sign up now, and then no longer to test the features 70 or 75 days from now.

Thanks!

[contactus]

So, Power BI never (ever) offered me to sign up for a Pro Trial. After the annoucement they did, and I subscribed now in May.

Now I see that I should only subscribe to the 12 month free trial for pro after June 1. That means that despite I was suitable to get a 12 month free trial for pro, now I will have to pay starting June 1?

So, being really polite here (despite being really pissed), it's common to microsoft use such bad faith with their costumers?

Can you reverse this and keep my right to use 12 month free trial (pro)?

Best,

[Anonymous]

@MiguelMartinez I'm a little confused here. So, the original announcement states that both Power BI Pro & Free will have the same functionality henceforth, excepting the ability to share a dashboard. However, the link below says that there are certain features that fall under Pro content and certain that are free content. Can you explain what this would mean and how this will impact me as a free user? 

[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?

[drosencrans]

The problem I have with the trial is that I have free consumers who may only login once a month for end of month metrics.  

Did Lawyers review these terms?  

I have a number of Pro licenses, but have many more consumers.  Not cost effective if many of my users of the Power BI portal only need to view/consume the dashboards and not collaborate.

Thanks Microsoft.

[drosencrans]

The problem I have with the trial is that I have free consumers who may only login once a month for end of month metrics.  

Did Lawyers review these terms?  

I have a number of Pro licenses, but have many more consumers.  Not cost effective if many of my users of the Power BI portal only need to view/consume the dashboards and not collaborate.

Thanks Microsoft.

[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.

[kaarel]

Can I use Power BI Report Server on any of the Azure Cloud VM-s with SQL Server Enteprise pre installed? Does does VM-s include Software Assurance...

"Alternatively, if you have SQL Server Enterprise with active Software Assurance, you can use your Enterprise per-core licenses to run Power BI Report Server"

Thanks,

Kaarel.