Sharing Reports

[DBrewin]

I am part of a small trust of schools and want to use PowerBi to help analsye data.  I've created reports using PowerBi desktop and have also shared to the PowerBi service as I have a Pro licence.

I am the only person in the organsation who will build reports but I need to others to view them.  I understand that they will also need a Pro Version to do this via the PowerBi service, but the cost of this is prohibitive.  Is there a simple way of sharing these desktop files for them to just view without using the PowerBi Service, I have considered a simple option of just Microsoft Teams as a means of sharing the files but the issue with this is that it would then need those files to be manully updated.  Hence a secondary question of is there an easy way to open up a powerbi desktop file, refresh it and then save it again (e.g. PowerAutomate?).

Hope you can help...

Dave (onedrive)

[ibarrau]

Hi. Sharing without license is a problem. That's the idea of licensing, sharing. The only two ways of sharing with only free license are:

- Share the .pbix file: users must have power bi desktop installed and they should click on "refresh" (that will ask for credentials the first time) each time they open it. You can use email, sharepoint sync, onedrive sync, etc.

- Publish to Web: if your data is not sensitive. You can publish the report to Power Bi Service and then make it public with "publish to web". That will create a link with free access. It's not a secure way of sharing because it doesn't have login and it might appear in a google search. Be careful with this option, it's not for sensitive data.

I hope that helps,