Power Bi Pro using Excel and Dashboard/Report Distribution

[PGuinan]

Hi...I am new to Power BI and would like some clarity if possible!

Q1. I have Desktop and a Pro licence. If we exclusively use Excel as the data source for creating dashboards & reports, do the report/dashboard viewers within the organisation need anything but the free/office 365 licence to view the content of an Shared Dashboard/Report. 

Q2. If I created an Organisational Content Pack, that would be using a Pro Content feature and therefore not available to view if you only have a free/office 365 licence....Correct?

Q2. The structure of my workplace is that we are an Outsourcing company with client side teams, including a BI specialist, on client equipment. We intend to create initial Power BI Dashboards/Reports from a client side Excel file but within Central BI (i.e. not on the client side). I would then like to hand it over to the client side BI specialist to maintain. I presume I would send the PBIX file to them and they would then refresh with the same source Excel file on the client side equipment ready for Sharing with a defined community. Is there anything wrong with this assumption?

Thanks in advance

Paul G

[v-huizhn-msft]

Hi @PGuinan,

Besides @Greg_Deckler posted, please review the following articles for Gateway and sharing report/Dashbord to others in details.

On-premises data gateway
Install and Configure a Personal Gateway
How should I collaborate on & share dashboards and reports?
Share dashboards and reports with colleagues and others

Best Regards,
Angelia

[Greg_Deckler]

A1 - If your Excel files are stored in OneDrive, then this is correct, only Free but if they are on-premises, you would need a gateway and thus Pro.

A2 - Correct

A3 - They would probably have to publish it themselves to their own workspace and share it from there

[PGuinan]

If the dashboard/reports were to be manually refreshed why would I need a Gateway?

We would love to automate refresh by pointing toward a Sharepoint file containing an Excel data source but dealing with Client IT is to be avoided generally and as I understand it we would be in a Power Pro licence situation for all users.

[v-huizhn-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @PGuinan,

>>If the dashboard/reports were to be manually refreshed why would I need a Gateway?

The on-premises data gateway acts as a bridge, providing quick and secure data transfer between on-premises data (data that is not in the cloud) and the Power BI, Microsoft Flow, Logic Apps, and PowerApps services. For example, your data is stored in SQL Server database, you can get data from SQL trough Gateway.

If you want to automate refresh by pointing toward a Sharepoint file. You need to add data resource in your gateway, please see the following screenshot.


Then click your dataset, set a schedule refresh like the following screenshot.



In addition, please mark the helpful reply as answer. And you'd better open a new thread if you have different problem based on the policy. Thanks for understanding.

Thanks,
Angelia

[PGuinan]

Thanks Angela and all.