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]

What if i register after 1st June, will I be entitled for the 1 year offer or I will only be eligible for the standard trial + one time 60 days extension?

[contactus]

Ask: Does this changes in power BI free affect my use? I'm the only one who uses the system, I create the dashboards with spreadsheets in Excel and I only share the link (iframe) to my 'clients' to use in their website. They don't use the power bi dashboard system, they don't make any corrections in the Power BI. They only embed the link in their website. 

The access in the website varies from each person. Usually small business.

I'm confortable in paying the pro license but it would be impossible to continue using Power BI if every small client had to pay a fee, or if I had to pay the monthly payment of USD 5000,00.

In power BI pro can I keep creating and sharing the link to embed in websites?

[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.

[dfischer]

I have some follow-up questions on the Power BI Pro licenses. 

1. I see that the cost will be $9.99/month/user.  Are staff fluctuates often so adding and removing licenses will be necessary.  Is there long term licensing commitments or can we add/remove licenses every month?

1. My team currently develops visualizations and dashboards within Power BI Desktop and we would like to use Power BI Pro to share these views.  Is there additional charges associated with the development of dashboards/visualizations?  Will we be able to continue to use Power BI desktop to create our visualizations? 

[ElsD]

Hi,

The post of May 30 says:

"Users that have licenses assigned from the Power BI Pro or Power BI Pro Trial subscriptions, within Office 365, are excluded from this (1-year free PRO) offer."

We are working with 0365 and My colleague only gets the 60days offer.

Are you sure this is how it should be?

Why make a difference for O365?

Best regards

[lebeauceron]

Hi, is it normal that at 10 AM June 1st EDT it is still business as usual with the free version?

Kind regards,

Paul

[ovetteabejuela]

Hi,

I want to clarify, I mean explicitly (or maybe in other terms).

So in our organization, we've been using the free service and are expecting to have the extended trial for the next 12 months.

My question is, what will happen to those people who are just joining in and have not signed in to PowerBI before May 2nd? Does that mean they have to get a PRO license already?

[danielsaat]

Hi Miguel - what about E5 licenses, will PowerBI Premium be included with those license types?

[tbolon]

Regarding the migration from Power BI Embedded.

Our company have an Azure Enterprise Agreement. With Power BI Embedded, our credits could be used to subscribe Power BI Embedded.

With the new Power BI Premium offer, will we able to use our Azure EA credits to pay for the subscription or not ?

More generally, how will Power BI Premium be billed ? using Office 365 subscription or Azure subscription (or both ?)

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello,

we've been using Pro Trial in our organization, but right now, noone can access Pro Trial. Even though we get information about succes of activation the trial (see picture, although it's in czech) users can't access dashboards. Any idea what to do?

Thanks

MV

[DawidMichna]

Hello @MiguelMartinez

I was a free user of PowerBI for some time, until yesterday when I accidentally clicked on Start 60 Pro Trial version butto several hours ago. So I am now a 'Pro Trial version: 59 days to end' user now.

Does it mean I have to forget about a possibility to participate in extended 12 month trial from June?

[Anonymous]

@MiguelMartinez, Can you confirm if my understanding is correct?  For a PBI Desktop user (PBI Free), he will have the ability to publish reports to PowerBI Online, but will not have the ability to share it with others, 

[Anonymous]

OK so just to clarify....  if I'm a Pro user and have shared a dashboard (with a dataset refreshed on a schedule, not directquery) to an external user, who is using the Free service (and currently is able to access the dashboard),  from June 1st they would need to be a Pro user?

[Michiel]

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but important nevertheless: I was informed that many users in my organization received an email from Microsoft about changes in Power BI Free. This has led to many worried users and questions. It seems that this email has been sent to anyone who has had Power BI Free lately, even when they have been upgraded to Power BI Pro by now (I didn't receive the email myself, probably because I have worked on Power BI Pro from the start - I don't know).

What is the policy on sending unsollicited emails to Power BI users? Can a Power BI admin block direct emails to Power BI users in their tenant? Having to services hundreds or more users on something that just comes out of the blue is, well, a nuisance.

Excited about Power BI Premium, by the way.

[vlahoz]

Hello @MiguelMartinez. What about RLS on free accounts?

[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