Using the Power BI Service to replace a Tableau on-premises Web Service

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I have been asked by a client to investigate replacing their current Tableau on-premises Web Service with the Power BI online service. Currently, they run two Tableau web services - one for internal reporting, and one for external reporting for clients and 3rd parties to connect to. The client is no longer seeing value for money with Tableau and feel that they are not using it to its full capabilities. They have told me that they have approximately 50 external users.

I have had a quick look at Power BI Embedded - while it at its lower levels will save them money, I am unsure what would be the best way to size it, without actually trialling the service and using the capacity planning tool.

What other alternatives do I have? Would it be possible to use the native app.powerbi.com login and workspaces/apps instead?
For reference, the will be served via a central Data Warehouse. I will either need to use RLS or individual data sets via custom queries with client based parameters.

If anyone has any insight on potential solutions, or directions, that would be great.
Thanks

(PS - this is very similar to a question that I posted elsewhere, so apologies if this seems like a duplicate 🙂)

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

You can know from the link shared by the previous engineer, if you want to share the report with external users, except "Publish to web" and "Export report to PPT/PDF", the rest of the sharing methods require the license of external users . If they have a Pro license themselves, there is no need to assign them. If not, then you need to add them to the organization and assign them a Pro license . You can refer to the case below , about how to assign Power BI Pro to guest users .

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Assign-Power-BI-Pro-to-guest-users/m-p/482473 

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

After my reply, I found the correct documentation!  Appreciate you replying

Thanks

[v-easonf-msft]

Hi @Anonymous 

So your goal is to share content on the Power BI Service to external users, and currently you have about 50 external users, right ?

If you're just sharing specific or single content , you can turn external users into guest users with Ad hoc invites, and then send them links to the content, which they can access directly after accepting the invitation.

If you have a lot of contents to share with them, you can create a dedicated workspace, put that contents into the workspace, and then through Planned invites, turn external users into guest users, and then add them to this dedicated workspace so that they can see all the content in the workspace .

Whether it's sharing a link or adding them to a workspace, a license is a must . So if your content is in shared capacity , anyone who wants to access the content all need a Pro license . If your content is in Premium capacity , free users with Power BI Service accounts can also access the content you shared .

The above methods are established in the case that your content contains private information and is not recommended to be published publicly. If your content has no private information, you can publish it publicly, then you can use “Publish to web” to generate a link and provide it to users. This function is visitor friendly because it has no license requirements.

The following links describe how to invite external users to become guest users and share content :

Distribute content to external guest users with Azure AD B2B - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Distribute Power BI content to external guest users using Azure Active Directory B2B - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

The following link describes how to use the Publish to Web function :

Publish to web from Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

The link below shows you more ways to share content with users on Service :

Share Power BI reports and dashboards with coworkers and others - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

I hope these can help to you .

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Eason
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Eason.  This is the information that I am after.

The client I am working with doesn't have a premium capacity & are not interested in upgrading to it (they are after cost savings, not cost blow outs). 

Based on what you are saying here, the only way for 3rd parties to access is for them to have their own Pro licence, under their own org?  Is there any other way around it? 

As it stands, I'd like to suggest the B2B solution for Power BI Licenced external users, but am not sure how to setup externals that are not licenced.  The only way I can see around this is for the client to create licenced M365 for external users on their Azure AD Tenancy.

Cheers

[lbendlin]

You can test drive the embedded option here Power BI Playground

This seems to be the most appropriate solution from a technical perspective.

If you instead use a regular Power BI Premium type scenario then all external users need to have a Pro license.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.

I am concerned that based on re-developing their reports and actually running an instance, that the costs will outweigh the benefits.

I suppose the only other solution is that the org gives their 3rd parties logins and licences under their own banner.