Power BI Embedded external sharing, users required to have Pro license (not according doc?)

[LasseMr]

Dear community and MS,

I have been struggling with this for a while now and kind of given up, cause I feel I am being contradicted between what I read in the documentation and what I experience.

We are running Embedded Capacity A2 and currently sharing reports with external users via invites as guests (B2B) adding manually on portal.azure users, assigning them to appropriate Group (workspace) - and embedding the reports on the sharepoint site associated.

This works fine, but originally, and what I have been waiting for, is to be able to share the reports directly with the external users, so that they can access the reports via the power bi portal, or even better, via published workspace app.

As I read on whitepaper, and other places, (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/whitepaper-azure-b2b-power-bi), this should be possible and without requiring the users to have a pro license, as the reports are hosted on a embedded capacity.

BUT, everytime I test, either via publised app or direct report share, it pops up for the external user to upgrade to Power BI Pro.

What is it, a bug from MS, a limitation for embedded capacity, a legacy update pending on our environment (workspaces are updated to "modern")? Anyone got experience on this?

 

"Upgrade to Power BI Pro
To use Power BI Pro features, upgrade to a Pro license. Your org requires that your IT department assign people Power BI licenses, so contact your IT admin to request a license. Learn more"

Thanks!

[v-chenwuz-msft]

Hi @LasseMr ,

Only the P SKU allows free Power BI users to consume Power BI apps and shared content, in Power BI service. But A2 is EM SKU.

You can consider to use Embed Power BI content using a sample embed for your organization application. Power BI embedded analytics allows you to embed Power BI content such as reports, dashboards and tiles, into your application. Even EM capacity allow free licenses users  to have an access.

Refer:

Capacity and SKUs in Power BI embedded analytics - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Embed content in your Power BI embedded analytics application enabling better embedded BI insights f...

Best Regards

Community Support Team _ chenwu zhu

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

[LasseMr]

Dear @v-chenwuz-msft ,

Finally a clear answer.

I have been finding this highly confusing and misleading on the Power BI documentation and guidance!

And a bit disappointing that EM has this limitation!

Anyways, so, to satisfy our need we do not have a low-code/no-code solution for EM, we need to "build app" and code our way for a solution... correct?

And, what about security / auth control? 

Using the invite B2B approach allows us to link AAD users between customer tenant and our tenant and then control who has access to what - several of the links you sent is using a different approach - is there one that allows the same "easy" approach for user management?

Highly disappointed, but also finally relieved to get a clear answer, thanks, after months of paying support plans and countless calls with MS support.

[aj1973]

Hi @LasseMr 

Does the workspace you want to share into the Premium Capacity? 

The external user needs to have and AAD_ID and allowed access to the Premium Workspace

[LasseMr]

Dear @aj1973 ,

Thank you for the reply.

As mentioned in the initial post it is running Embedded Capacy A2, which from what I understand is one of the two overall types of Premium Capacity, and indicated by the diamond icon next to the workspace.

Best regards,

Lasse

[aj1973]

@LasseMr 

And how about the external users? do they have Power bi Licenses in their organization? if not then did your organization add them to the AAD as Guests?

[LasseMr]

Hi again @aj1973 ,

No license, thats the point I am looking to avoid.

The users are added as guests in the AAD and allocated the appropriate workspace/group.

They can access the reportage when embedded on sharepoint, but doesn't work for shared report or shared app, then it asks for the user to upgrade to Pro, which I from the dokumentation understand is "not necessary".

[aj1973]

@LasseMr 

Did you add the users to the Workspace as Viewers?

[LasseMr]

As viewers not members yes.

[aj1973]

I beleive you are facing security settings issue. Can you take a look at this

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-ad-b2b-guest-users-can-now-edit-and-manage-content-in...

think it will help you detect what you are missing

[LasseMr]

Hi @aj1973 ,

You might be on to something, I have checked the tenant settings and they should be set in the correct manner, see below:

The users should not be able to edit or manage content, and only appear as viewers, i.e. also enabling the feature to share content with non-power bi users and avoid Pro license requirements etc.

The other place they mention is the AAD user settings, mine is setup as follows, I can't spot anything out of the ordinary and that might conflict my needs?