Workspace access

[dmkblesser]

Hi community, 

I'm looking for ideas if any of you have experienced the same issue.

We have PBI workspaces set up for business groups and we have dev, uat and prd workspaces.  The semantic models and reports are published through pipelines. 

We are assigning the business group viewer roles and grant them build permissions to all deployed semantic model as part of the pipeline promotion process. 

However, as many community member questioned already, this viewer + build permission won't give them access to view the available semantic models within the workspaces. 

We want make the semantic model viewable for the team members cuz this is the businss specific workspace and they should be able to see all their assets. We also don't want to just assign them contributor roles, cuz that may lead into accidentially removing reports or semantic models in the pbi workspace. 

What would be your solution if you ran into something similar in the past? Thank you 

[gauthamboppana]

@dmkblesser  - Have you checked the OneLake Catelog?  Allows the Users to see the datasets and reports.  Also, make sure the semantics models that you are build have the option "Make the dataset discoverable" enabled. This allows the datasets to be discoverable by the Users (even if they do not have access) and the Users can request access.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @dmkblesser 

If the user has got viewer role within a workspace, could they simply not? Use the three little dots, right click and open semantic model within the web interface as shown below.

[dmkblesser]

Hi @GilbertQ, since they only have viewer roles, the semantic models are not visible in the workspace. So that they cannot click on the semantic model and then click on the three dots on the top. 

[krishnakanth240]

Hi @dmkblesser 

Since Viewer and Build doesnot expose datasets in workspace UI, I would use Power BI App for visibility and datasets for avoiding contributor access to maintain governance.

So instead of relying on workspace UI, we can publish a Power BI App from the workspace which includes reports & semantic models. Also in Microsoft Power BI App, users can see and access datasets and no risk of deletion.

[dmkblesser]

Hi @krishnakanth240, maybe I missed something here, how do you show semantic models in the App? 

[krishnakanth240 · Accepted solution]

Hi @dmkblesser 

Once you opened the report from App level, on top of page click on 3 dots and select - View semantic model

 

[krishnakanth240]

Hi @dmkblesser 

If I have answered your query, please mark this as a solution. Thank you!