Sanity Check: Power BI Pro for Non-Office 365 Users

[ddavis]

I am architecting a Power BI Service solution for a non-Office 365 client. Because of the O365 focus of the service, the pieces of the puzzle are a spread out over each of the topics. Would someone be able to confirm some of the things that I have discovered by digging through the documentation and community forums?

• Non-Office 365 users need to have a company domain email account to register to the service.
• Non-Office 365 users can use the Power BI Group for sharing and collaberation.
• Non-Office 365 users can use the Gateway for refreshin Imported datasets and Direct Query datasets.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @ddavis,

•Non-Office 365 users need to have a company domain email account to register to the service.

Yes. Power BI requires that you use a work, or school, email address to sign up. For more information, please refer to this article: Self-service sign up for Power BI.

•Non-Office 365 users can use the Power BI Group for sharing and collaberation.

As long as the user is Power BI pro user, he/she can create a Power BI group, no matter he/she has Office 365 subscription or not. But if the user wants to share OneDrive files in this group, then the user needs to be Office 365 user, because groups are part of Office 365, and are designed to work with Exchange, as a key part of a groups is to have group emails. For more information, please refer to this blog: Group Workspaces in Power BI and Licensing.

•Non-Office 365 users can use the Gateway for refreshin Imported datasets and Direct Query datasets.

Yes, if the user is Power BI pro, then this user can use both personal and data gateway to refresh both imported and DirectQuery datasets.

If you have any question, please feel free to ask.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[ddavis]

@v-qiuyu-msft,

Thank you for your response and for the helpful links! I really appreciate it.