Uncertain about license limitation

[KasAtWork]

I need help deteremining what licenses i need.

This is the current use case:

Every month we need 5-15 reports generated.

We use Power Automate Flows where a flow gets triggered and tries to use Power BI Report builder's "Export To File for Paginated Reports" task to export the report to a pdf.

We are trying to prevent paying for big licenses for this relatively small task.

I have looked into Premium Per User (PPU), and it states here that the PPU license has a limit of 1 report every 5 minutes. Quote: "With Premium Per User (PPU), the exportToFile API allows just one request in a five-minute window. Multiple requests within the five-minute window result in a Too Many Requests (429) error."

But here it says that the PPU license does not support the "exportToFile" api. and that i need a workspace backed by a Premium, Embedded or Fabric capacity.

Quote: "

• The report you're exporting must reside in a workspace backed by a Premium, Embedded, or Fabric capacity.
• The exportToFile API, is not supported for Premium Per User (PPU).

"

Does this mean I can't upgrade my license to PPU and work aroud the five minute window, and I should get extra capacity?

I'm relatively new to Power Bi and microsoft licensing, I'd like to get advice on what is the most affordable way to get my workflow working.

I'd like to add that purchasing a F2 Fabric license for about 300 USD a month is out of the question.

Thanks in advance! And I hope I'm not asking a redundant question.

[ibarrau · Accepted solution]

Hi. I'm sorry but you can't automate this without a dedicated capacity. The cheap alternative would be doing it manually.

On the other hand, you can make it a loooooot cheaper with a pay as you go subscription with F2 in fabric. almost 300 usd a month is turned on 24 hours for the whole week. When creating your script for exporting to pdf, you could start  resuming the capacity, export all and then pause the capacity. While the fabric capacity is paused, it won't change. If this exporting takes an hour, the capacity will cost $0.36/hour. That's like 10.8 usd by month.

You can check more about this pause/resume automation in this example that schedules the way in azure, but you can do it in a different place

https://blog.ladataweb.com.ar/post/721935191102341120/azure-pause-resume-fabric-embedded-o-aas-con

I hope that helps

[KasAtWork]

Thanks for the quick response! If I get the F2 Fabric capacity, do i still need Power Bi Pro or PPU to export to file with power automate? all I need to do is upload a template once in a while. currently we have no licenses at all

[ibarrau]

Yes. You still need a Pro because Power BI Pro allows you to develop/create items. You still need to create a workspace in order to assign the fabric capacity. At least one power bi pro would be required.

Regards