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.

[remcoroeleveld]

Hi @MiguelMartinez; short question regarding the change process. One of our customers subscribed to the pro-trial version a week ago. This subscription was succesfully. However, today, a pro licence was assigned to this user. The trial notification banner on top of the page is however still displayed. 

My question to you; will this banner disapear when the trial ends? Thanks in advance for getting back to me!

[Omega]

I am still a bit confused between Pro User and Premium User. From what I understood:

Pro user can:

   - Create dashbaords and reports

   - Share reports and dashboards with other users (within or outside the organization)

   - Slice and dice shared/created reports and dashboards

   - Capacity of 1 GB for publishing reports/dashboards

Premium user:

   - Can't share reports or dashboards

   - Can create their own version of dashboards/reports based on the data they have but can't use data sets from shared             reports/dashboards to create their own version of reports/datasets. 

   - Can slice and dice shared/created reports

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks!

[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?

[danextian]

• 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.

vs

• Exclusions: Power BI Pro and Power BI Pro trial users are not eligible for the Offer.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Changes-to-the-free-Power-BI/May-3-announcement-overview/m-p/167395

Hi @MiguelMartinez

Please, I need  your clarification.

[danextian]

Hi @MiguelMartinez

I really am curious. Does this mean free users will be already be able to view reports with RLS come June 1?

[eduardofrocha]

Dear all,

I have a Dashboard that is being used globaly inside my company, by many users from many teams, to see the graphs and download the data.

Most of those users access only this Dashboard inside the Power BI, and it's simply unreal to think that those users will must acquire a premium license to watch one single Dashboard.

Having a premium license to publish and share a dashboard is completely understandable, but I'm still trying to understand why you are pushing this to all "readers" users.

Knowing this scenario, and as per my understanding of the discussions here, this Dashboard have a deadline, and it's really disappointing to know this.

I'm trying to keep alive the value generated for my users, so I'm sharing this same Report (not the Dashboard anymore) inside a Sharepoint page, as a "publish to the web" view. It's not the same experience (unfortunately), but it worked here, the users are able to see the data.

The problem is that, once I made it, my users lost the funcionality to download the data.

After all, is there a way to keep this working as before, without losses?

Thanks, Edu.

[bigdawguga]

So will the education E5 plans version of power BI be the free or pro version?

[wildnwitty6]

The fine print for the offer reads for those that have "registered."  Does this include users that are assigned a Power BI Free subscription by their Global Admin?  Also, we have had numerous users assigned free subscriptions in May as new projects are underway - does this mean that they can't get the extended 12 month free trial?  How can we get those users covered?

[Martijn_Batavia]

The Power BI Premium calculator (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/calculator/) is very unclear te me. I would think that there is a choice between either acquiring a Power BI Premium node for an entire organization or acquiring individual Power BI PRO licenses.

This leads to the conclusion that it's best to acquire individual Power BI PRO licenses up to 500 users ($4,995 / $9.99 = 500). When the number of Power BI users (either producers or consumers) exceeds 500, it's cheaper to acquire a Premium license.

However, the calculator adds up the price for a Premium node ($4,995) to any number of Power BI PRO licenses ($9.99 each).

As a result, even for 1 single user the total amount is $5,005 a month, or over $60K a year!

I can't believe this could be true, because this would be the end of Power BI for all small to mid-sized organisations.

Hopefully I am being stupid and I am missing something here, but I would be very relieved if somebody could reassure me by answering the following questions:

1. Is my assumption, that there is a choice between either a number of individual Power BI PRO licenses or an organization-wide Power BI Premium 'capacity', right?

2. If so, why would we need a calculator for this, as it's clear to see that 500 users is the turning point?

[molly726]

I agree with the concerns that this new pricing impacts FREE CONSUMERS of the data.  I think its reasonable to pay a cost to author and publish the dashboards.  However charging every internal viewer is crazy.  This will just drive us back to Tableau.

We had recently introduced Power BI to a number of nonprofit clients who were very excited about this.  A Premium license is out of reach for them, as is buying an account for all relevant internal consumers.  Is there any consideration of pricing for nonprofits?

[llaumans]

@MiguelMartinez 

Could you advise me how I can sign myself and my customers up for the 12 month extended PRO subscription? We are all elegible according to the condition that we used Power BI between 2nd of May 2016 and 2nd of May 2017.

When I logged in the first time to PowerBI I did receive a message which linked me through to your notification (https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Changes-to-the-free-Power-BI/May-3-announcement-overview/m-p/167395...) but I have not been able to figure out how to sign up for the trial. I also didnt manage to find clear instructions online.

Also I was wondering if I can also sign up other people on their behalf (when they are eligible for the extended trial) ? We started a pilot with the management team at a customer and I would like to extend their subscription without interrupting them.

Thanks for clarifying.

Kind Regards,

Lucas

[diverdown1964]

I have a couple of specific questions. THese should be considered in the case of an organization that has NOT purchased Premium. 

In the Post June 1 world, will Row Level Security still be considered a "Pro" feature? It's not specifically sharing, but I can see how it could be considered so. For the moment, I am assuming that it is. THe same question goes for access to the data catalog. 

Also - the differences used to be called out explicitly on the Power BI pricing page, but that comparison is now  gone. Is there an official list of "Pro" features anywhere?

[lguelcher]

I've read through all of the Q&As here, but don't see this one tackled. From what I can tell, the existing use of Power BI desktop is remaining as is. If that's the case, as an organizatation, I can have users who need to consume reports download the Power BI desktop for free. I can then share dashboards that have been created on Power BI Desktop with them - also for free. Is that correct?

[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?