Forum Discussion
embedding a PowerBi report into a SharePoint page
My power bi account has a Pro licence, some of my collegues do not. is it possible to share my report (single page report) with them by embedding it into a SahrePoint page? Pls, be aware that, my report uses both excel files on sharepoint and local sql server DB?
Hi Ajaal,
Hope you're doing well!
You can use the native Power BI web part in SharePoint Online to embed your report. Your colleagues won't need a Pro licence to view it but only if your workspace is on Premium capacity (P SKU) or Fabric capacity. If it's just a regular shared workspace with Pro, then viewers also need a Pro licence.
Your data sources are the real problem:
- Excel files on SharePoint → fine, these will work smoothly with a scheduled refresh via Power BI Service.
- Local SQL Server DB → this is the blocker. Power BI Service can't reach your on-premises SQL Server directly. You must install an On-Premises Data Gateway on a machine that has access to that SQL Server. Without it, your report won't refresh in the cloud, and the embed will show stale or broken data.
To sum up, set up the On-Premises Data Gateway first, that's the critical step. Then publish to Power BI Service, embed in SharePoint. For your colleagues to view without a Pro licence, your organisation would need Premium/Fabric capacity, otherwise they'll need Pro licences too.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions if needed. Don't forget to mark as solution and thumbs up if OK, that's motivate me to keep helping 🙂
Best regards,
Oussama (Data Consultant - Expert Fabric & Power BI)
Hi Ajaal,
Unless you have a legacy P capacity, or you have an F64 or higher fabric capacity, all viewers will need to have a pro license to be able to view the report.
That is unless you make the report public on the internet so that anyone and everyone can see it without authenciation, then a pro license is not required, but I would not recommend this.
When embedding in sharepoint, it is also important to remember that sharepoint will not override security on the report, so you need to ensure that users who have access to the sharepoint site also have access to the report for seemless embedding.
6 Replies
Hi Ajaal
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.
oussamahaimoud tayloramy cengizhanarslan Thanks for the inputs.
I hope the information provided by users was helpful. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the community.
Hi Ajaal
Hope everything’s going smoothly on your end. I wanted to check if the issue got sorted. if you have any other issues please reach community.
Hi Ajaal,
Hope you're doing well!
You can use the native Power BI web part in SharePoint Online to embed your report. Your colleagues won't need a Pro licence to view it but only if your workspace is on Premium capacity (P SKU) or Fabric capacity. If it's just a regular shared workspace with Pro, then viewers also need a Pro licence.
Your data sources are the real problem:
- Excel files on SharePoint → fine, these will work smoothly with a scheduled refresh via Power BI Service.
- Local SQL Server DB → this is the blocker. Power BI Service can't reach your on-premises SQL Server directly. You must install an On-Premises Data Gateway on a machine that has access to that SQL Server. Without it, your report won't refresh in the cloud, and the embed will show stale or broken data.
To sum up, set up the On-Premises Data Gateway first, that's the critical step. Then publish to Power BI Service, embed in SharePoint. For your colleagues to view without a Pro licence, your organisation would need Premium/Fabric capacity, otherwise they'll need Pro licences too.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask more questions if needed. Don't forget to mark as solution and thumbs up if OK, that's motivate me to keep helping 🙂
Best regards,
Oussama (Data Consultant - Expert Fabric & Power BI)
Hi Ajaal,
Unless you have a legacy P capacity, or you have an F64 or higher fabric capacity, all viewers will need to have a pro license to be able to view the report.
That is unless you make the report public on the internet so that anyone and everyone can see it without authenciation, then a pro license is not required, but I would not recommend this.
When embedding in sharepoint, it is also important to remember that sharepoint will not override security on the report, so you need to ensure that users who have access to the sharepoint site also have access to the report for seemless embedding.
Embedding a Power BI report in SharePoint using the Power BI web part requires viewers to have a Power BI Pro license (or PPU) to see the report. There is no way around this licensing requirement with the embed-in-SharePoint approach alone. If your organization has a Fabric/Premium capacity (F64 or higher, or a P SKU), you can publish the report to a workspace on that capacity.
Hi Ajaal
The answers above are correct on the mechanics, so I'll just add the part that usually matters most in practice: with the native Power BI web part you're stuck with the licensing rule, either everyone who views needs Pro, or you put the workspace on F64 capacity, which is a big jump in cost for sharing one report internally.
If that licensing wall is the real blocker for you, the way around it is App-Owns-Data embedding. Instead of the native web part, a small custom solution (or a SharePoint plugin) authenticates with a service principal and generates embed tokens, so your colleagues see the report without needing any Pro licence of their own. The capacity requirement is much lighter than F64 too. The native SharePoint embed simply can't do this, which is why it feels like it doesn't work nicely.
Your on-prem SQL still needs the gateway either way, as oussamahaimoud said, so set that up first regardless of the route.
We recently did exactly this setup for a large insurer here in the Netherlands, viewers on SharePoint, no Pro licences (a f4 capacity i think), and I'm currently building a SharePoint plugin to make this kind of embed easier...
Happy to help if you want to get it set up, just give me a shout and we can have a quick chat about your scenario.
Paco
Founder DataTako
