Accessing Power BI Pro when on G Suite

Power BI Online Service
1

Hi,

I’ve built a Power BI report for a client that I have embedded on the client login portal of my website. The idea is that the client logs into the portal and can view their report which I have given him access to by sharing the report. He also has access to videos of me talking through the dashboard and what I’m seeing in terms of insights etc (I act as his Virtual CFO)

My client is happy signing up for a Power BI Pro licence so that he can see the report within my portal which sits there embedded within his client login page. The thing is though, his company is on G Suite, not Microsoft 365. I didn’t think this would be an issue yet when we sat together yesterday and I shared the report with him and he signed up for Power BI Pro, a few odd things were discovered:

  1. He could log in to the online service. But we couldn’t see or find the report I’d shared with him
  2. When he logged into my client portal, the “please login to your Power BI account” message came up where the report was embedded. He logged in, but nothing happened and the please login message just stayed there.

Does anyone know if the fact that he’s on G Suite is the issue? Or is it perhaps something else that I’m missing here? I tried to replicate his issues by using another one of my company’s logins and I didn’t appear to have any issues.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Paul

2

@5thGreen,

I don’t think G Suite is the cause of your problem here. I’m on G Suite with a Pro license, and haven’t experienced this type of problem in accessing shared reports.

Check out the article below. There is a requirement that external users need to be in your organization’s Azure Active Directory. Could that be the root of the problem here?

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– Brian

3

Hmm … thanks Brian that could be the solution. I won’t be able to test it until next week though given it’s 6pm Friday and the client is done for the week!

Fingers crossed this is an easy fix next week.

Thanks again

4

@5thGreen,

Good luck! Please let us know how it goes.

– Brian

5

How did you embed the report? Do you have a Power bi embeded License? Your client and his Pro license is it part of your organization?

6

Hi, 5th Green,

Allow me to divulge some of my past experiences about this.

The basics : any report is visible to a user as long as the user has Pro license.

The details: though the above statement is true, the rules change little bit when we talk about multi tenancy. For example, If I was to share a report with you from my home tenant, you will not see it in your home tenant. Instead you will be browsing my tenant as a guest. The way to always go back to the same report is to bookmark the link. (I am also aware that there is shared to me icon in Service but that is for any artifact originating my home tenant, such as a report shared by my colleague, since we both are in same tenant, I will all that is shared to me by there)

Second, even when you embed (simple embed) a report in a portal, (for example, say I have a web app and you are a member, and I embed a report in this app for you to see) following will occur,

you will be able to sign into the app (since you are a member)
when you click on the report, IT WILL ask you to log into Power BI.
This is also normal as this embed was simple embed. In order to truly embed a report, you will need to use Power BI embedding as use the app owns data scenarios, meaning, using a master account you are authenticating all the users who log into you website(portal/app) and no other license is needed.

I have tried to keep it simple here, but there are many nuances when it comes multi domain, single tenant, or multi tenant etc scenarios.

I hope this shed some light
Regard

1 Like
7

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8

Hi @5thGreen, we’ve noticed that no response has been received from you since the 5th of February. We just want to check if you still need further help with this post? In case there won’t be any activity on it in the next few days, we’ll be tagging this post as Solved. If you have a follow question or concern related to this topic, please remove the Solution tag first by clicking the three dots beside Reply and then untick the checkbox. Thanks!

9

Hi AnshP,

I’m sorry but I’m still a little confused. By tenant you are referring to our different logins presumably i.e. one of is XXX@abc.com whereas the other is XXX@123.com right? That I understand.

What I am unclear about is the rest of it. To be clear:

  • Both of us have Power BI Pro licences
  • When choosing the embed code I am choosing the Website or Portal option. I am NOT choosing the Publish to Web (public) option
  • I have share the report with my client which makes me think he should be able to view it
  • When he logs into my client portal he is asked to sign in to Power BI to view the report, but nothing happens.

Unfortunately from your response I am unclear about:

  • Whether what I am wanting to do will actually work, yes/no. I feel it should given we both have the right licence and I have shared the report with him
  • If it should work, what step have I not done that should be corrected to make it work?

Many thanks

10

@5thGreen,

Your first understanding is correct. different tenants meaning he is not within you AAD(Azure Active Directory as a resident but as a guest)

So lets take this scenario.

User A – ap@abc.com
User B - bm@xyz.com
assume in this scenario User B also has Pro license

as you see that these are 2 different tenants (and by that virtue, two different domains)

Scenario 1: ( Also know an viewing the embedded report - not an official term but makes it easy)
User A embeds the report in the website (say WEBA) or a portal. So user A can showcase these reports to all the members.

User B logs into the WEBA, the sign in is successful since user B is a member. Now User B navigates to the report (The same PBI report that User A previously embedded).

A few things will happen

** User B will be asked to log into Power BI** ( This will happen every time when User B wants to view the report)
reason: Power BI need to authenticate if the User B has right licensing or not.
Not only that this user needs to have the right permissions to view the report.

Please note, on the local machine of User B pop up blocker should be disabled as once User B clicks on the view report a new tab will open for the authentication purposes

Scenario 2 Sharing a report only with external user with Pro License

In this case, the usual way of sharing the report will work. (once again, for us to share a report with external user, they(external user or client) need to be part of AAD of user A (sharer or report developer ).
The AAD permissions can be granted via

  1. a planned invite meaning add the User B to User A’s Azure Active Directly as a guest user

or

2.you can do ad-hoc invite - meaning, when User A need to go to the workspace and then add the User B as one of the 4 roles

or

  1. directly share the report to User B)

If we do take this approach, then User B will get an email saying “someone shared the report” they will click on the link and usual authentication process will happen and they will see the report. Now here is the catch, If User B closes the browser and next day (sometime later) navigates back to the Power BI because User B want to view the same report again, it will not show. This is because
User A home tenant was different than User B’s.
User B will have to go back to the same email and click the link again and bookmark it.

All the steps above assumed that user B has Pro license

Scenario 3:

If the User B does not have a Pro
Then your option to have this user B view the same report is as follows
User A must have Premium or Embedded SKU’s and the workspace (where the report resides should be on Premium or Embedded Capacity). By doing this, you will be able to bypass the “sign in every time scenario”

@5thGreen,

we have covered a lot of scenarios and different topics which one must pay close attention to when doing these sharing (kind of a crash course in Sharing vs Viewing)

  1. Azure B2B sharing also known as external sharing
  2. Pro License requirements (when one needs and when one does not)
  3. Roles within workspace
  4. External user’s shared with me feature within home tenant and guest tenant.

To add to you ‘unclear things’
Sharing a report is not same as someone viewing a report embedded in a portal. These are two different tasks
I have covered both, sharing with someone or a report embedded in a portal above

As per your last statement, I do not think you are doing anything wrong, check the licenses once again for the User B (your external user) and check if the pop up blocker is in play or not and also see if there is any RLS in play.

Since you mentioned that you client is in G suite and has purchased a pro license. I would also check if he/she is able to log into app.powerbi.com and sign in. Once successful check license status by clicking the profile icon. If this is indeed pro, then we are good on licensing aspect. All that is left is to ensure that once in the portal, there is not pop up blocker issue. Ideally the client should see a pop up asking for a sign in again to Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) and thats all there is to it. :slight_smile:

I hope this helps and clarifies.
Ansh

1 Like
11

@AnshP thanks for your detailed assessment. I really do appreciate it.

My takeaways from this are:

  • Check that the Pro Licence is activated correctly. He only added the licence last week so is in the 30 day trial phase. I presume this doesn’t change anything though.
  • Ensure pop up blockers aren’t causing an issue. I don’t believe they are, however I did get him to log in on my computer using Chrome whilst I was logged in using MS Edge. Hmmm … I probably do have blockers enabled. This could be the cause.

I’m trying to get hold of my client now so we can test this out. I’m desperate to get this resolved as I have other clients I want to add in to this as well.

I’ll let you know how I get on. Thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

12

Awesome, yes definitely keep us posted.

Hope this works out for you.

Regards
A

13

Hi @5thGreen, did the responses help you solve your query? If not, how far did you get and what kind of help you need further? If yes, kindly mark as solution the answer that solved your query. Thanks!

14

Hi @5thGreen, we’ve noticed that no response has been received from you since the 11th of February. We just want to check if you still need further help with this post? In case there won’t be any activity on it in the next few days, we’ll be tagging this post as Solved.

15

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