Power BI Report web part for SharePoint Online Discussion

[lukaszp]

The new Power BI (preview) web part for SharePoint Online is now available globally for Office 365 First Release customers. The web part lets you securely embed Power BI reports from your PowerBI.com account in SharePoint Online pages so you can build secure internal portals easily. The web part requires users configuring the web part and consuming the reports to have Power BI Pro licenses.  

Let's use this thread to discuss the new Power BI report web part for SharePoint Online.   

Please read the documentation before asking a question, posting a comment below. The documentation contains answers to common questions and workaround for any known issues.

Known Issues:

When adding the Power BI (preview) web part, you are asked to sign-in but are not able to.

You will see error message similar to:

• "We need you to sign in again. Once you do, we'll bring you back here."
• "An error occurred, please try logging out and back in and then revisiting this page"

To resolve this issue, ensure your tenant is set to "First release for everyone". To enable SSO, the Power BI web part relies on new Authentication APIs provided by the SharePoint team and only available when First release for everyone is selected. See the Office 365 documentation for detailed steps

[ericleigh007]

Consider this.  We're not trying to do anything different than if we put a link to the report.  The report would be a non-pro report, and users would see it displayed.  Saving ONE CLICK is not worth paying for a PowerBI pro license.  Surely you must see that?

[jimbobTX]

This. 

I totally understand the need for Power BI Pro to create content, but it's ludicrous to expect a user community to have a Power BI Pro license just to view the content that was created. 

It will kill the ability for any large organization to adopt Power BI as a solution.

[Fugi]

I mean, what other options are there?  Any comparable solutions like Tableau or Qlik Sense have the same restriction and their prices are significantly higher than Power BI Pro is...  Qlik Sense asks $1,500 per user and then 23% of that per year!  Power BI Pro for all users is pennies compared to the competition.... if i'm wrong please feel free to enlighten me as i'd love a more cost effective solution, but at the moment in the market it seems PowerBI is by far the cheapest solution even if all users need Pro.

[jimbobTX]

It's the fact that even with an E3 agreement (which is already a lot of money), it's an additional $9.99/mo/user (retail price). Do the math on that real quick, and let me know the impact to a company with 7000 employees. How's that cost-effectiveness look now? Granted, not all 7000 employees need to consume Power BI reports, but even if you halve or even quarter that number, it's still a substantial amount of money.

The other option is to negotiate an E5 agreement, which includes Power BI Pro. Not sure of the delta dollars there.

I think that Power BI content management should be one tier, and consumption another. I'm trying to drive adoption of this product in my company, but those prices slam the door on that.

[Fugi]

I'm not argueing that it's a lot of money, i'm argueing that comperable solutions are a more substantial investment by a significant margin (in my reserach / experience).  Have you looked at similar solutions and received pricing from them?  

[dlovitt]

Is the requirement that consumers of the web part have a Power BI Pro license only during the preview or is this going to be a requirement at GA as well? This is a simple question, I need a simple answer.

[lukaszp]

In SharePoint Online, Power BI web part consumers and authors need a Power BI Pro license. Hope that's simple enough.

[Anonymous]

That's outrageous!

I've just upgraded to a couple of Pro licences so that we can share securely by embedding into SP sites, only to find out that that's still not enough.

So my choices are:

Use the Publish to Web option and risk somebody posting it to social media in just a couple of clicks.

Or

Pay extra to publish MY data securely, only for the consumers to still not be able to view it!!!

Whats the point of the Pro Licence if it still doesn't close the Governance back door? - Absolute joke.

I agree with @jimbobTX and his Herion dealer style licencing comment.

[josephc]

In SharePoint Online, Power BI web part consumers and authors need a Power BI Pro license. Hope that's simple enough.

How convienent, you won't allow us to embed private data which is shareable via dashboards for free. Then to embedd within our own SharePoint online space your require Pro for those users.

I can't purchase 500 licenses of Pro, make the authors have it something, but not consumers.  We can't implement with these restrictions.

[ericleigh007]

Agreed.  This policy is too restrictive.   One Microsoft person told me when complaining before that eventually the embedding might be availble at a non-pro level for non-pro users, and then would only be blocked if the user was a non-pro usesr accessing a dashboard which used pro features.

Requiring this might be acceptable, but always requiring a Pro license, with the added per-user cost of a pro license, is too expensive.

[ericleigh007]

Agreed,  This is too limiting.

[earg73]

I have a few questions:

1. Are users able to export to Excel as they would with the Power BI.com service?

2. As it relates to filters are users able to use the search functionality?

[Bjorn]

I've added the web part and get a login prompt:

Power BI

We need you to sign in again. Once you do, we'll bring you back here.

Clicking on the Continue button redirects back, but never gets me past this prompt. I'm logged in to PowerBI Pro, have a Pro license, first release, etc. 

[lukaszp]

For those failing to login, please ensure your tenant is set to "First release for everyone". To enable SSO, the Power BI web part relies on new Authentication APIs provided by the SharePoint team and only available when First release for everyone is selected. 

See the Office 365 documentation for detailed steps:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-up-the-Standard-or-First-Release-options-in-Office-365-...

[Bjorn]

Thanks for the reply. I've set first release for everyone, waited a bit, logged-out/closed all browser windows, but still get the SSO authentication issue. Thinking it was a page issue, I created a new a page but now the PowerBI web part is missing from the choices! We have ~30 E3 users, maybe five of those have PowerBI Pro. Do all users have to have Pro in order for any of us to add the web part?

edit: just took an hour or so to update, but I can authenticate now.

[lukaszp]

To add the web part to the page, the user adding it needs Pro. So not sure what exactly you're seeing. I do know that when you change First Release, it can take some time before it fully propagates. So it might just be a timing issue.

[Anonymous]

You can't seriously expect everyone in our tenant to have a pro bi license to view the report! I hope I read that wrong....

[AdrianV]

The security issue of publishing a web link is a huge problem, this new Web Part appears to start to address the issue. By asking us to purchase the Pro client just moves the problem further down the chain. The new issues are budget and publishing control. I would ask Microsoft to consider allowing non-Pro clients view capability otherwise we will continue to need to look for a differnt solution.

[clechner77]

I just don't understand where and why the thought of needing to have a pro license came into the picture for Microsoft.  Like has been said before, if someone actually has access to the report, what are we paying for?  The ability to consume the report through a different medium?  Is the issue here consumption and using the web part to surface reports potentially public (for the whole company public, not for public meaning for the world), thus increasing resources to host/process/display the data?

That's the only rationale I can come up with as to why they would require a pro license for VIEWING purposes.  Microsoft, help us understand here, that's all we are asking for.  Clearly this doesn't make sense to your clientbase as most people are scratching their heads at this point.

[davidbell77]

I agree, my company have been looking in Power BI for several reporting functions, and I think yes Pro should be required for publishing, but for viewing? Making potentially everyone in the company forced to get Pro so they can view something? Stopped the project dead in it's tracks.

[ericleigh007]

Us too.  $9.99 per user/ month to view a webpage and save one click is just too expensive.

Notice how i am trying to keep this professional, but you have to eee it from our standpoint.  Feedback about software can also be about pricing of software features.

this has been said before, I note is was marked as DECLINED.  We need a third tier of licensing that allow for viewers of content.  This may seem counter-intuititve, but a better price point will result in more usage and more revenue.   I suggest you guys user PowerBI to model the 3-tiered approach.