Power bi app, connecting to a web service

[alexbjorlig]

Our team is thinking about publishing a power bi application, that our customers eventually could download from appsource.microsoft.com.

Our data source is our own Rest API with token-based authentication, and we are currently debating how authorization would work.

Our objective is off course to make sure, that users that install the Power BI application can only access their own data.

How would you design this? Should the user input a token when installing our app, or is there a smarter way to do it with maybe row level security? If you have any links to documentation/information about developing power bi applications, please share 🙂 

[v-gizhi-msft]

Hi,

You can try to set R-L-S policy by setting roles on Power BI Desktop by download pbix file on Power BI Service.

Then publish it to Power BI Service and apply users to roles:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-admin-rls 

And remember to set workspace permission:

https://help.relativity.com/9.2/Content/Relativity/Security_permissions/Setting_workspace_permission... 

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Giotto Zhi

[alexbjorlig]

Hi Giotto.

Thanks for the provided links, will start experimenting with RLS.

Why is the workspace permissions needed?

[v-gizhi-msft]

Hi,

It is because if you want to apply R-L-S to users, these users should be only 'View' permission in your workspace.

Otherwise R-L-S will not work.

Best Regards,

Giotto Zhi

[alexbjorlig]

Hmm I have some homework to do on the documentation then 🧐 - because from my understanding I don't know who the users are going to be? After all my objective was to create a power bi application, capable to be installed by "any" users?

[v-gizhi-msft]

Hi,

You can put the users you want into a security group and then add this group to the app when publishing it.

See this:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-create-distribute-apps 

Best Regards,

Giotto Zhi

[alexbjorlig]

Thanks for taking your time to answer. But is the provided article not for the use-case of Apps in the same organization? I'm asking about publishing the application to consumers outside my organization?

[v-gizhi-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can also publish apps to external users by adding Azure B2B collaboration users to The directory.

Please take following steps:

1)Invite external usres to your Azure AD by sending an email.

2)These external users accept the invitations and become guest in your Azure AD.

3)Create a security group, and add these external users to this group.

4)Add this group to the app when publishing.

Tips: If you only want to share a small number of external users, you can directly share your app link with those without steps 3) and 4).

Here is the reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/b2b/add-users-administrator#add-guest-users-... 

Best Regards,

Giotto Zhi

[nickyvv]

Hi @alexbjorlig, have you tried looking at template Apps ? Looks like that is what you're looking for.

Do have a look at the requirements and limitations on the above link. That list is quite long..

An excerpt from the documentation:

The new Power BI template apps enable Power BI partners to build Power BI apps with little or no coding, and deploy them to any Power BI customer.