Shared Reports

[eskimo]

We have only just started looking at Power BI as a possible solution for our reports.

We have written our own EPOS software that is being used by a number of different clients' businesses. Each one will typically have their own SQL database hosted locally in their shop.

We are hoping to be able to design some standard dashboards/reports and then share them with each client that agrees to sign up to our reporting solution. We would only want each client to be able to connect to their own database though - I guess this means changing the connection string as the report is run. (Some users would have a few databses to choose from though - i.e. regional managers of different shops.)

As changes are made to the master reports, we would need these to replicate to all the people with access to that report. We would not want to have to make the same change for each client's workspace.

We are just wondering if this sort of thing is possible in Power BI or if we have mis-understood its purpose?

[v-huizhn-msft]

Hi @eskimo,

My information is helpful? Please mark it as answer if it's useful. Please open a new thread if you have any different issue. Please feel free to ask.

Thanks,
Angelia

[v-huizhn-msft]

Hi @eskimo,

You can share dashboards and reports with colleagues and others.  When you share a dashboard, those you share it with can view it and interact with it, but can't edit it. They see the same data that you see in the dashboard and reports, unless row-level security (RLS) is applied.

If you want to set different people view different people. You can define roles and rules within Power BI Desktop. When you publish to Power BI, it will also publish the role definitions. But it's not supported for live datasets.

In addition, you can create a group in Power Bi service, you need to contact your O365 tenant administrator whether group creation option is enabled. 

More details, please review these following articles.
Share dashboards and reports with colleagues and others    
Row-level security (RLS) with Power BI

Create a group in Power BI.

For your scenario, it's complex. It seems that you want to create a report frame, other clients add the data based on their own database,right?

Best Regards,
Angelia

[eskimo]

Hi Angelia,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. Sorry I have not been able to respond until now.

I think you are right in your summary sentence; we do want to create the report frame on behalf of our clients and when they log in and run the report, we want it to query their own database.

I have tried to understand the three links you posted, but all of this is quite a steep learning curve for me.

From what I understand, RLS seems to apply filters to a singular database. However, we are looking to have one dataset per user account so I'm not sure this will work. I think this is our biggest hurdle.

Regards,

Rawden.