Paginated Report - You cannot subscribe others because you are not the owner

[WCONGRAVE]

Hi, hope someone can help

I’ve created a Paginated Report, so my sales managers can run and distribute reports to their teams. The report is based upon PowerBI Dataset used in a PowerBI Report.

Users can subscribe themselves to the reports no problems, and want to subscribe their teams so they get the report weekly. However they get a warning saying

“You cannot subscribe others because you are not the owner”

And they cannot subscribe their customers to the reports. This is in direct contradiction to the videos I’ve seen, and the Microsoft page on subscriptions

“You can't subscribe others to a report with row-level security (RLS) applied unless you are using a paginated report, which will allow you to send the subscription to others using your security context.” https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-report-subscribe

The only way I can see round this is to make them all admins on the workspace, but that cant be a sensible resolution… please help

[chrisfin]

There was work done in this area to allow Premium users without a Pro license to subcribe themselves to reports, but that didn't unblock the requirement to allow users without a Pro license to subscribe other users to a report.  The sentence you refer to is specific to the RLS scenario and assumes the user subscribing others already meets the other criteria.

[WCONGRAVE]

Thanks, but that raises more questions.

If only people with Edit permissions can subscribe others to reports, doesnt that render the RLS statement pointless. If the user has edit permissions, then they ar enot subject to RLS anyway (i.e. the admin of the report doesnt need to be placed in a RLS security group - they have full access). 

Users affected by RLS are therefore NOT admin, do not have edit rights, and cannot subscribe others to the reports? Unless I'm missing a way to grant users edit rights without granting them admin.

[venal]

@WCONGRAVE 

please refer the link to cross check for the limitations and pre-requisites for the email subscription.

[WCONGRAVE]

Thanks @venal , I've read that article several times,

So, as I understand it from that article

• without Edit rights (Admin in Workspace) you cannot subscribe others.

However, later on in the same article, it states

"For report email subscriptions, if the dataset uses RLS, you can create a subscription for yourself. You can't subscribe others to a report with row-level security (RLS) applied unless you are using a paginated report, which will allow you to send the subscription to others using your security context."

I am using RLS. I am using paginated reports. So my users should be able to send to others using their security context! Becuase, if they had edit rights on the report, they would be above the RLS element

[chrisfin · Accepted solution]

Right now, Power BI reports/dashboards will simply block you from creating the subscription for others if RLS is applied, or if you're using a live connection to Analysis Services, and you don't have the option to send it to others even using your security context for the data.  Paginated Reports doesn't block you in those use cases.  This doesn't supercede the requirements to send to others - all of those rules apply prior to this rule being evaluated.

Happy to update the docs to clarify.

[v-xicai]

Hi @WCONGRAVE ,

From the article, creating a subscription can be done by:

• Users with a Power BI Pro license
• Users viewing content in a Premium workspace or app may also subscribe to content located there, even without a Power BI Pro license.

You don't need edit permissions to the content (dashboard or report) to create a subscription for yourself, but you must have edit permissions to create one for someone else.

You may create security group for these users who need to subscribe Paginated Report to others, then assign them edit permission.

Best Regards,

Amy

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[WCONGRAVE]

Thanks Amy. I should have mentioned the report is published to an App in the premium workspace

Can you elaborate on 

"You may create security group for these users who need to subscribe Paginated Report to others, then assign them edit permission."

Would they all need to be admins or contributors to the workspace to do this (from this article)? Because that would require them all to be Pro users, correct? And they are not... Is there another way to give a group the permissions required?