Share Report with Client Via Sharepoint or Other Method?

[Tad17]

Hello Community,

We are currently exploring ways to share reports we have created with customers. Before the normal responses come in:

1. Power BI Embedded and Power BI Premium are not cost effective while we are in the testing and promotion phase. We are looking for a cheaper alternative, at least while we figure out if we can even sell these reports yet.

2. We would like to either use our own website or a sharepoint site (if we have to) to potentially control who can see which reports and to make a slightly nicer looking environment than Power BI Service if they are just loging in to play with the reports. Is it possible to create a sharepoint login with Power BI Pro License for our customers?

Any other tips and ideas are greatly appreciated.

[MNMark]

Have you thought of different file delivery methods? A PBIX report is just a file and therefor it can be moved around easily.  Before we had our Report Server up and running we shared the reports both via email and a shared drive.  The only requirement is the view has to have Power BI Desktop installed in order to view the report.  It's a free download so cost should be a limitation with that.  However, this possibly wouldn't work if you use DirectQuery for your data connections as the report would try to pull fresh data each time and your user's may not have access to the data source.   

[Tad17]

Hey @MNMark 

Thanks for your reply. I thought about this as it is an inexpensive alternative. However, the goal is to charge the end users a subscription fee. Because of this we don't want them to have any access to what the actual data looks like and we would prefer the files remain somewhere we can update them. Therefore, we are looking for an embedded type solution minus the cost.

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

You certainly can grant them each a Power BI Pro License and then view it via SharePoint that will work very well.

I would not recommend the sharing of the PBIX because reporting changes would need to be maintained and emailed around. Yes it can be done but if to a large amount of users it can become quite a challenge.

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

Yes you can use the SharePoint option with Power BI Pro users.

As far as I know you can also use the Azure A SKUs to test your application, where you can start or pause it when not in use?

[Tad17]

Hey @GilbertQ 

Thanks for your reply. 

The A SKUs is part of Power BI Embedded correct? The issue with that is that we have about 20 reports/dashboards we would like to share with clients and the clients are potentially worldwide as we are in the shipping business. Therefore, the cost associated with that would be more than we might profit from distributing the reports. 

Do you know if it is possible to assign BI Pro licenses to people when giving them access to Power BI through a sharepoint site?