Forum Discussion
Set up Email Subscriptions for External Users
I am working through how access, sharing and subscriptions works for External users within a Premium instance and I ran into something odd. I am able to share a report with an external user but I am unable to set up an email subscription for the external user on that same report. For example, I create a report as [email protected], I am able to share that report with [email protected] but I (ReportOwner) am unable to set up a subscription on behalf of the external user(s). It gives me the "user is outside of your domain" error.
Unlike when sharing the report I am unable to "save and close" if there is an external domain in the subscription list. I have confirmed that when the external user logs in they can subscribe themselves if they so choose but we are wondering why we are unable to subscribe them to the report on their behalf. Are we missing something and if not, is there some kind of work around for this?
5 Replies
We have done 99.9% of the work for a client... only to find out that we can't use the daily e-mail feature externally.... seems like a key limitation for sharing reports externally, particularly ones that update on a daily basis. Please include this capability and people vote here: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37173571-allow-users-outside-organisation-to-receive-subscr
- Hi there
Currently as it stands you cannot subscribe external users to reports or dashboards.
But I do recall that a user who has got a shared dashboard or report can subscribe themselves? Hi Anonymous,
I'm afraid that we cannot achieve your requirement currently in Power BI.
You could submit your idea in Power BI ideas Forum or vote this similar idea.
Best Regards,
Cherry
This function is important to Microsoft partner, and ISV partner, please consider to inmplement it soon.
This one's been open for years and it still bites partner/ISV scenarios. Root cause: native subscriptions are built for licensed users inside your tenant, so "subscribe on their behalf" is blocked the moment the recipient is outside your domain — and external users can only self-subscribe if they log in with a license, which defeats the purpose for clients who'll never sign in.
For partner/ISV delivery specifically, the pattern that works is Power BI Embedded (reports served through your app on your capacity, no per-user license) plus a scheduling layer that emails the exports on a cadence, scoped by RLS role. That sidesteps the subscription engine entirely.
Full disclosure — I work on a tool that does exactly this (Embedsy), so I'm not neutral. But even if you build it yourself, that's the architecture that works. I wrote up the why and the how here: https://embedsy.io/blogs/schedule-email-power-bi-reports-external-users
