Save a Copy of a Report but no Edit

[alozano]

Hi! We have several reports in  Workspace that will be accessed by 400 end-users via the PowerBI Service (online). We want to make sure that these end-users are able to "Save a Copy" of these reports into their MYWorkspace, so that they can make further personalized modifications as needed, but we do not want them to be able to "Edit" the original reports. In short, we want these reports to be read-only, but that they can also be saved into each users "My Workspace".

I have tried assigning users with the "Viewer" role, which accomplishes the NO Editing for the reports, but they cannot "Save a Copy" of the report. On the other hand, if I assign the "Contributor" role to the users, the can do both "Save a Copy" and "Edit" the report. Is there any setting that we could leverage to accomplish Saving a report (into My Workspace) for users, but not allowing report editing? Thank you very much!

[alozano]

Hi @collinq! Thanks for your suggestions. I think the first one - placing teh PBIX file in a networked shared available to users- may not fit the business case we are trying to accomodate for since we are actually trying to keep end-users (report consumers) away from the PowerBI Desktop to avoid potential confussion (since we are just migrating from another tool into PowerBI).

As for Dataflows, I haven't used them yet, but I will definitely take a look at that because that may accomodate for what we are looking for.

What I was thinking at first was to have two separate workspaces. One (let's call it SOURCE) with the original datasets and reports published from the Desktop version (we are only serving data not visuals btw). And another workspace (let's call it CONSUMER) with a copy of the reports (only, not datasets) from the SOURCE workspace. That way if users mistakenly change any report within the CONSUMER workspace, we can always overwrite it from the  SOURCE workspace. I still have not tried this yet and I am not sure how "access" would play here being that datasets only live in one workspace. What do you think?

I will start playing around with the Dataflows in the meanwhile. Thanks.

[collinq]

Hey @alozano ,

Your idea of the two workspaces with different permission should do the trick as well.  BUT, I am wondering about if you are letting the other report "writers" that modify the report if they are just modifying what you have or if they can go back to Dataset level and make modifications there as well?  If they can make dtaset level changes then ou have to give them permissions to both workspaces (thus defeating the purpose).  BUT, if you are just sharing the "here is the report, do what you want with what I am giving you" then your two workspace idea should work.

[collinq]

HI @alozano ,

I don't think you can give access to a report and restrict the ability of the individual to modify that report.  If you are really wanting everybody (that needs to) to modify the report but you want an original version I have two thoughts of how this might work.

First, the easiest way is to put the pbix file into a network share and then have them all open it and save it from there (or put it in SharePoint or wherever).  That way everybody can get their own copy and you can keep the original version.

Second, if it is the DATA and not the visuals that you are actually trying to share you could put everything into a Dataflow and then let everybody hit the Dataflow results and create their own visuals.