Report Sharing & Permissions

[DataFun]

Hello Power BI Community,

I have a few questions around sharing Power BI reports.  I have searched the forum and haven't found anything that completely answers my questions.

I have a monthly report I will begin sharing with a broader audience.  I am sharing this through a MS-Teams channel.  I have granted access to the MS-Teams channel to the users as well as read-only access to the Power BI report.

1. The report name will change monthly and everytime I upload a new file, I need to set the permissions on that file to give the users access.  Is it possible to create a separate workspace for this topic and grant users access to the workspace?  Would this mean I would not need to grant access each month to each new report I share in this workspace?  Are there any disadvantages to this approach?

2.  My license is a Power BI Pro license.  Our company doesn;t have an option for Power BI Premium license.  When I share my reports, it is my understanding that the users need their own Power BI license to view the reports.  They can begin with the 60-day trial, but if they would like to view the reports after that, they would need to install their own Power BI Pro license.  Is my understanding correct?  Is there a way for me to share in read only view that does not require each user to have their own license installed?

Thank you.

[otravers]

#1 permissions are set at the workspace level, not the report level, so your approach can work, but the disadvantage is that any links or embeds (e.g. Power BI tab in Teams) from the previous report won't carry over to the new one.

#2. There's no free read-only license in shared workspaces, that only works for personal workspaces, so yes they'll need a Power BI Pro (or Premium Per User) license. There's nothing to "install" though since Power BI is cloud SaaS.

[DataFun]

Thank you.  Answer 1 helped me immensely as I had been setting permissions on each individual report and didn't realize I could set them on the workspace.  That works great for my purposes.  

Re: #2, I realize this may vary by organization, but how does a user activate a license if there is nothing to install?  The users of my report had to initiate the trial license to view the reports.  What happens when the trial expires and they want to continue accessing the reports?

[otravers · Accepted solution]

#2: end users consume Power BI content in the SaaS service, so if their trial expires and they don't have a license, they'll see an error message and prompt instead of the Power BI content. Licensing is handled in the O365 admin along with your Office and other Microsoft licenses.