Forum Discussion

JimmyWhitetrix's avatar
JimmyWhitetrix
Frequent Visitor
3 years ago

RLS for Free Users - Licenses and Subscriptions

Hello,

 

I work at a Microsoft school and we utilise Microsoft 365 for everything. About 1500 students (A5 licenses), 180 staff (A5 licenses) and 2500 parents (A1 licenses).

 

I have created a dashboard in Power BI Desktop that presents student academic data. The report uses RLS to filter by logged in user's son/daughter, so whan a parent logs in, they only see their child's data.

 

Now when I publish the report to a standard Workspace, and share this report with a parent, they can only view the report if they commence a 'Pro' trial.

 

So my questions:

  1. Can a user with a Free license access a report that utilises RLS?
  2. Is RLS a premium feature?
  3. If so, do I have to purchase: Power BI Premium Capacity or Power BI Premium Per User?

Thanks in advance.

Need Help

3 Replies

  • ibarrau's avatar
    ibarrau
    Super User
    3 years ago

    Hi. Let's start with how Power Bi works. When you want to share or collaborate at Power Bi you create a workspace. In order to share things in there you can do it in two regular ways.

    - Using pro licenses: both users must have the license. The creator and the reader/viewer.

    - Using Premium capacity: only creators must purchase pro and viewers can just be free users

    If I'm correct A1 doesn't have pro license. So those users won't be able to read anything unless you publish an app on a premium capacity environment or unless you change them to A5.

     

    RLS is not a Premium feature. RLS will work with pro, but just like I said before readers and builders must have the pro license.

     

    There are others alternatives for sharing scenarios like this one. There is an intermediate license, Power Bi Embedded. It's a dedicated capacity that will let you develop a WebApp that can embed Power Bi reports and share them with any user. In case you don't have a team for development, there are some companies that have already built apps to help work with this scenarios like this one: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/pidata.pi-soft-pibi?tab=Overview

     

    Premium per user is like a pro with esteriods. Readers and viewers must have PPU. I won't recommend this license for massive sharing scenarios like yours.

     

    I hope that make sense

    • JimmyWhitetrix's avatar
      JimmyWhitetrix
      Frequent Visitor
      3 years ago

      Thank you for taking the time to respond.

       

      I really feel that, as a school, our edge case has not really been considered in Microsoft's license model.

       

      Our Free Users are parents, many of whom will not ever access the report, and those that do will simply engage for just a few moments each quarter.

       

      All I require is the activation of RLS via viewing a workspace, but at over $5000 per month for Premium, this is not good value.

       

      I will contact our licensing partner to enquire about 'Power BI Premium'. Perhaps I am missing something here.

      • ibarrau's avatar
        ibarrau
        Super User
        3 years ago

        That sounds perfect. Contact your partner because I'm not sure how education license work. Maybe you can get A5 for parents or a different premium for education. I'm not aware about education licensing or prices. Let us know how you solve it in case you get an agreement so other users can be aware of the solution.

        If you can't solve things with the partner, consider as Plan B the PowerBi Embedded with a prebuilt web app like the one I have sent.

        I hope all of these helps