Regarding Licensing Clarification on Power BI

[Arpit1234]

We are automating reports using Microsoft Power BI Pro (Trail version) , with trail version I am able to publish the reports ,to all Accenture users 

User don’t need to install Power pro trail version  to view the reports  ,  Just they need to login to their cloud space(Power BI account ) and view the report.

So the question here is if we have to publish the report to all the user do we need to buy the licenses for all of the user who want view the reports?

or  

With one license we can  create the reports and publish and user can keep on looking through their Power BI Account/cloud space without any license consider the reports will be canned report published by the designer?

[CampAGC]

@mitsu - I'm curious how Publish to web will impact this. 

I'm currently looking at the pricing options myself, using a trial version of pro and really don't think the consumers on my end need pro capabilities. Most of them are less than skilled at typing, and I'm going to have to do training on how to use the different dashboard components. 

If I had Pro, and can publish to web, it would mean anyone (free, pro, or web based) could access without having a Pro License. 

I basically need Pro to collaborate properly with the only other person making dashboards at my organization (also having pro) and to manage the AD groups. 

[mitsu]

You are correct if you publish to web , you would not need license for the users to consume it . 

However  publish to web would makes your data public , and is accesible by every one wh has access to the link . 

Also publish to web are not supported on the following data sources . 

1. Reports for groups

2. Reports that use Direct Query data sources

3. Reports using real-time data sources.

The refresh of the report published on the web takes about an hour to get updated once the report on the web app is refreshed.

Link below should help you get more details on the same .

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-service-publish-to-web/

Hope this helps .

Regards,

Mitsu

[JPC3]

Hi Mitsu, perhaps my understanding is wrong, but publishing to the app.powerbi.com site does not make your report/dashboard public.  Access to the dashboard and underlying report is controlled by the publisher and can only be granted, currently, within your Office 365 corporate domain.  No-one outside this can access your report and for users within permission must be expicitly granted and can be revoked at any time.

JC

[mitsu]

By Publish To web . I meant the 'Publish to web feature in Power BI service'  . Looks like you are referring to the publish to the Power BI service  . If so you should know that for the users to consume the reports created using pro feature , they would need a pro license . 

Regards,

Mitsu

[trebgatte]

If you are interested, I have videos of how you can use your free Power BI license. I made these as a response to a student question in my Power BI class. Demos are sometimes a much more effective way to show the various aspects.

My LMS requires that you have to have a login to access the content. If you sign up for the free course trial here, using the button at the top:  http://academy.tumbleroad.com/courses/project-online-power-bi-dashboards, the last chapter contains all of the content around using the free Power BI license. 

Hope this helps!

Treb Gatte | Project MVP | Blog | Twitter

[mitsu]

It depends on whether you are using any Power Bi pro features to create these canned reports . Please refer to the  list of pro features in the link below . 

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-power-bi-pro-content-what-is-it/

The reports and Dashboards created using the pro features would require a Pro license for all its consumers . If you are not using any of the pro features the consumers of the report would be able to access the same with free Power Bi account . 

Please note : If you are Publishing using content pack then the pro license will be required . Content pack is a pro feature and is not supported on the free version .

Hope this helps .