Power Bi Report Sharing with Colleagues

Enterprise DNA is a really great platform you have developed for people like me to get a better understanding of Power BI.

I have one query and was seeking your help. I have developed some reports on power bi and I have a pro license at work. Now, the issue I have is to share the report with all of my managers. I don’t think upgrading everyone to a pro license is an option.

We have an internal company website where I can share the link of the report so managers can access the report.

I was wondering the way you are showing power bi showcases and its available to everyone, can you please advise how to do the same thing, please.

Also, if there is another way you can suggest would be much appreciated. However, I liked the way you are showing your Power BI showcases, I was thinking of something similar.

Can you please guide me thru?

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Hi @mannymalhotra,

You can refer to below guide by Microsoft that might help you.

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Hello @mannymalhotra,

I’m providing a link below where I’d created a post few days below based on this topic which will cover everything that you’re looking for.

Hoping you find this useful and meets your requirements. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks and Warm Regards,
Harsh

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Thanks @MK3010.
I dont this is the same way Enterprise DNA show their showcases on their website.
1st one says the data will be shared as well which I dont want
2nd one says that user should have pre or premium license which I dont think is ideal situation.
Thank you for your help.
Let me know if I have missed something.

Thank you
Manish

@mannymalhotra,

Welcome to the forum- great to have you here!

The key issue here is whether the would be any sensitive or confidential data in the reports you’d be publishing? If yes, then stay far away from the publish to web option (what we use for the Challenges and Showcases), since it is not secure, even if you put the link within a site requiring login. Please see this thread for further discussion of that:

Publish to web vs Embed - #2 by BrianJ

If that’s the case, and other paid licensing options are not feasible, then I think you’re stuck with the option of distributing the PBIX file itself, either via email or a shared network drive or cloud, or sharing it as a pdf or PowerPoint and losing the interactive/dynamic dimension. Here’s a great quick summary of all your options:

I hope this is helpful.

  • Brian
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Hi @mannymalhotra,

As you had mentioned report so i assumed that you want to share dashboard along with the data. If you wish not to share data then can try to share by OneDrive with read access only.
Or See if you can upgrade yourself to E5(premium) then the issue will be solved.

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Thank you very much all for your comments.
But how does Enterprise dna shows their report on their website… I cant see any data model…
For ex below

I want to do the same. Like Showcases are shown without their data model.

@mannymalhotra,

Enterprise DNA uses Publish to Web for the showcases and the data challenges because the data are not sensitive.

  • Brian
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Here is a thought,

If the company is using their own internal internet service that isn’t available to outside people, you can publish within there own net service. IE sharepoint, or provide only screen shots to people that you need to. If i remember correctly, you can put permission on the file who you want to have access too within sharepoint/.

just a thought
thanks
keith

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Thanks Brian.
Apologies for asking so many qs.
When we see the showcase I cant see the data just the report…
The report is not confidential but would prefer to show within our internal website.
I might have to use publish to web option but put that link on our website would that work?

@mannymalhotra,

No worries – asking questions is what the forum is here for.

The best analogy I can make about publish to web is this – when you publish to web it is like putting your information on a roadside billboard. After putting that billboard up, you may try to cover it with a sheet (put it behind a secure portal), but even after doing so, the information on the Billboard is “out in the wild”. Someone may have taken a picture of that billboard before it got covered and shared that picture (and the billboard actually includes tools that encourage sharing). In addition, when you posted the billboard you gave the rights to that information to the billboard company and they may have chosen to share it. There are also ways for people who want to do so to look “under the sheet” and still access that information even after it’s covered up. And finally, your license with the billboard company technically prohibits you from putting sheets over their billboards.

So, given that should you use publish to web? To me, that depends entirely on the magnitude of the adverse consequence of the information becoming public. If the reaction is “meh, that’s annoying but ultimately no big deal”, then using it may be worth the cost savings of purchasing and administering a bunch of Pro licenses. If the reaction is “we now have a major data breach that someone has to answer to senior management for”, then probably not… But the key is just to be informed about the nature and extent of the risks so you can do your own accurate calculation of expected benefit/cost.

Here’s a good article that makes many of the above points in a different way:

I hope this is helpful.

  • Brian
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Hi @mannymalhotra, thanks for posting your query to the Forum! Did the response provided by the contributors help you solve your query? If not, how far did you get and what kind of help you need further? If yes, kindly mark the thread as solved. Thanks!

Also, we’ve recently launched the Enterprise DNA Forum User Experience Survey, please feel free to answer it and give your insights on how we can further improve the Support forum. Thanks!

Hi Brian,

Thank you very much for your explanation. So am I understanding it correctly that if I am on Pro Licence can I share my report with Premium users? or do I have to purchase pro licence?
The reason I am asking this is because when I shared my report it said that only pro licence can view my report?
Thank you
Manny

@mannymalhotra,

I have not yet had the good fortune to work in a Premium capacity, so don’t have firsthand experience with which to address your question. However, here’s what Microsoft says on the issue:

  • Brian

Hi @mannymalhotra,
In terms of Power BI Premium; my organisation uses this as we share reports with other users around the globe, and as the vast majority of the audience are not developers, they only need read-only style access.
The key blocker here is that your organisation needs to sign up and pay for Power BI premium (link at the bottom of the post).

The way we manage this sharing to those without a Pro license is via “apps”. In a Premium capacity world, once you’ve loaded your report into a shared workspace you publish it to an “App” (sharing the same name as the Workspace but a different link); one caveat here is that the Workspace needs premium capacity assigned by your administrator before non pro-license users can access.
This “App” contains a list of the reports from the Workspace (noting here that a Workspace admin has the ability to show only selected reports from the workspace in the App if deemed necessary), which can be accessed by those specified in the “Permissions” section. The reports cannot be modified from within the service like they can from the Workspace. The way we promote the use of apps internally to developers is they’re a read-only interface to reports developed for wider consumption.
When your organisation has Premium capacity, only report developers require an individual pro license. The remainder of the organisation are free to access “App” workspaces using their standard company credentials, where as mentioned above, the workspace has premium capacity assigned and they have been given permission to that app workspace by the workspace Admin.

If your organisation uses Microsoft Teams, there is integration with Power BI where you can add a report within a team “tab”. I’ve not done this yet but it may be another avenue worth investigating.
Googling “Power BI into Microsoft teams” returns videos / written instructions on how to approach this.

Power BI Premium costs and comparison to pro licensing can be found at the below link if that’s of interest.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/#powerbi-comparison-table

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@mannymalhotra,

Just wanted to follow up on our conversation from a few weeks ago. Earlier today, Adam Saxton from Guy in a Cube published the following video. I’ve always known that Publish to Web was not secure, but I was not aware of the specific techniques he demonstrated for how people can not only locate your published to web reports via Google, but also how they can drill down into the really granular metadata associated with these reports, such as filename, table structure and names, column names and much more. Scary, indeed…

  • Brian
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Very interesting, thanks ! I was thinking of the idea of using Publish to Web embed code within an internal SharePoint portal and assumed it’d be “secured”… well, not anymore ^^

@Alex7891,

And right on cue, here’s another GIAC video on that very issue…

  • Brian
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Thank you very much Brian. This is great help.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
Yes we are planning to get the pro licence for everyone here at work.

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