Pro sharing issues

[RichOB]

Hi, I have a Pro License, and I have been creating dashboards and uploading them to SharePoint for employees to view. These employees need to sign up once to get a free fabric account, after they have done that they have been able to see the dashboards on the SharePoint pages.

I have 1 employee who signed up months ago and has been able to see the dashboards, now there's one random one he can't see and it gives him the error message "Upgrade to Paid PowerBi License". The dashboard itself hasn't changed in terms of paid features, it's only small/basic with some table data and he was able to view it last week. Any ideas why this would be?

If the reason is that I'm on a Pro license (and not a Premium license), how can he still see all other dashboards on SharePoint freely?

I have the fabric trial, which has many days left. It says this online:

Fabric

Fabric is a platform that includes Power BI, and sharing within Fabric follows similar principles. You can share dashboards with other users who have Fabric accounts, whether they are Pro or Free, as long as they have access to the relevant workspace.

This employee has a free fabric account and has permissions set.

All advice welcome!

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @RichOB ,
I hope the information shared was helpful. If you have any additional questions or would like to explore the topic further, feel free to reach out. If any of the responses resolved your issue, please mark it "Accept as solution" and give it a 'Kudos' to support other members in the community.
Thank you!

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @RichOB ,
I wanted to follow up and see if you’ve had a chance to review the information provided here.
If any of the responses helped solve your issue, please consider marking it "Accept as Solution" and giving it a 'Kudos' to help others easily find it.
Let me know if you have any further questions!

[v-hashadapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @RichOB , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

This is happening because that specific dashboard is in a workspace not assigned to your Fabric trial’s Premium capacity (F64). Free users can only view content if it's in a Premium workspace. The fact that other dashboards still work confirms those are in properly assigned workspaces.

To fix this, go to the Power BI Service, open the workspace where the problematic dashboard is and under Settings -> Premium, make sure it's assigned to the Fabric trial (F64). Then confirm the employee has Viewer access to that workspace, either directly or through a Microsoft 365 group. Lastly, double-check the SharePoint embed: it should link to the same report in that F64-assigned workspace.

As long as your Fabric trial is still active and the workspace is correctly assigned, free users will be able to view the report without needing a Pro license. This aligns fully with Microsoft's official licensing model.

If this helped solve the issue, please consider marking it “Accept as Solution” and giving a ‘Kudos’ so others with similar queries may find it more easily. If not, please share the details, always happy to help.
Thank you.

[DBlinder]

Hi  v-hashadapu

I need some help on a similar matter. 

I am tasked with sharing a dashboard via link for view only to a thrid-party outside our company. We are consultants and recently adopted PowerBI for this purpose. 

I have reviewed all the documentation I can find on this and here is what I understand. 

• I can share to a third-party with or without a license if I have Embeded version (I have 2 Pro Licenses)
• If I have the embeded version I don't have time to develop a client portal so I could use sharepoint with extternal access for the third party user? Not sure. 
• The cost of embeded is rather high and I want to know all of this before investing. 

Please advise on best way to share with a third-party. This thrid-party is ALSO an O365 user, but they may not have Fiber enabled on users and may also not have users assigned free PowerBI licenses assigned. This is a problem because it would cause the client to take an action. 

Help!

Preview

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @DBlinder , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

At the moment, Power BI Pro doesn’t support frictionless, secure sharing with external users. If you share a dashboard from your Pro workspace, the recipient must sign in with a Microsoft account and have a Power BI Pro license, either from their organization or assigned by you. Using SharePoint or Teams won’t bypass these requirements; the same rules apply.

If you want to give your client secure, view-only access without requiring a login or license, your best option is Power BI Embedded. It lets you embed the report in a simple webpage or app using service principal authentication, so the client can access it without a Power BI account. You stay in control of access, and the data remains private and secure.

[Deku]

Items in workspaces on shared capacity required both viewers and developers to have pro licenses, so they can see the reports.

You can assign a workspace to a P1+ or F64+ and this will allow viewers to view reports with free licences, although developers still need pro to published items