PowerBI - licensing

[Karol_Cichonski]

Hello.

Has anything changed with licensing? By the end of October, I had three PowerBI Pro licenses for users who create reports, and the rest of the corporation had a PowerBI license to view these reports. From November 1, some employees are no longer able to use the reports and receive a message that they should purchase a PowerBI Pro license. The other part of the employees can use the reports but receives information that the license will expire in 8 days. What's up? When implementing the company in PowerBI, I received information that creating reports belongs to the Pro version and the rest will be able to use reports on the normal version.

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @Karol_Cichonski 

Licencing hasn't changed recently.

There is no licence which only allows users to view reports, what I think you're talking about is a Power BI Free licence. A Pro licence can only share reports with other Pro licences, not Free. To share Reports with a Free licence holder, the organisation requires a Premium Capacity licence and for the content to be on a Premium Capacity Workspace.

What I suspect has happened is that when the free users were invited to view the Report you shared with them, they also were invited to Trial a Pro licence free for 60 days. This has allowed them to view the Reports for the last 60 days but as the trial runs out they revert to Free users, unable to view the Report. This would also account for why some can still see the Report as they signed on to the Pro trial licence later than their colleagues and so still have a number of days of their trial licence to run.

Going forward you Free licence users will each need a Pro licence to view Report you have shared with them.

see: Power BI service features by license type - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps

Stuart

[Karol_Cichonski]

Thank you very much for your answer. So it turned out that our previous maintainer had misled us about licensing. I urgently need to straighten my case. Licensing PowerBI Pro is simple because there is one license for one user. But do you have any information on Premium Capacity Workspace?

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @Karol_Cichonski 

See here : What is Microsoft Power BI Premium? - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps

Stuart

[Karol_Cichonski]

Again, thank you very much for your reply. I have analyzed the text but I have one doubt. Maybe you can help me.
So if I buy PowerBI Premium per user for three operators, I will be able to share the resulting reports with all employees with a PowerBI license?

[Burningsuit · Accepted solution]

Hi @Karol_Cichonski 

Licencing hasn't changed recently.

There is no licence which only allows users to view reports, what I think you're talking about is a Power BI Free licence. A Pro licence can only share reports with other Pro licences, not Free. To share Reports with a Free licence holder, the organisation requires a Premium Capacity licence and for the content to be on a Premium Capacity Workspace.

What I suspect has happened is that when the free users were invited to view the Report you shared with them, they also were invited to Trial a Pro licence free for 60 days. This has allowed them to view the Reports for the last 60 days but as the trial runs out they revert to Free users, unable to view the Report. This would also account for why some can still see the Report as they signed on to the Pro trial licence later than their colleagues and so still have a number of days of their trial licence to run.

Going forward you Free licence users will each need a Pro licence to view Report you have shared with them.

see: Power BI service features by license type - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Hope this helps

Stuart

[Karol_Cichonski]

Thank you very much for your answer. So it turned out that our previous maintainer had misled us about licensing. I urgently need to straighten my case. Licensing PowerBI Pro is simple because there is one license for one user. But do you have any information on Premium Capacity Workspace?