There are a couple of options for sharing your Power BI report or dashboard. However, the method you choose will depend on your business situation. All methods involve the first step of publishing from the desktop to the service (app.powerbi.com).
Publish to Web
Pro License
Premium License
Sharing the PBIX file
Publish to Web
This is the easiest and quickest way to distribute your report to anyone, even if they don't have a Pro or Premium license. You just need to give them a URL link and they will have access. However, be warned! This method is not secure and makes it so that ANYONE can see and access your data. You may be thinking, "oh, but if I don't hand out the link to anyone, it'll be all fine." This is an incorrect assumption. Even if you don't distribute the link, people can (and will) view your dashboard via other methods. For example, check this out: google search power bi
If you are okay with anyone seeing you data, then this method may be okay for you. Certainly consult with your report consumers if they are okay with it as well. This option is good for companies that want to displaying public information for marketing and advertisement efforts.
Navigate to your report
Click share
Click embed
This will give you a URL link in addition to an HTML iframe if you'd like to embed it in your own website. You can also adjust the window size, upload a custom image, and set the default page (if your report has multiple pages).
You can read more details about Publish to Web on Microsoft's documentation.
Pro License
The next option is to grant everyone a Power BI Pro license. This will allow you to limit the number of people who have access to the data for more control. Although it costs $10 per user per month (as of this writing), you may only have a couple of report consumers in your organization making it a relatively low IT cost.
The implementation is almost the same as Publish to Web. Instead of choosing "Embed", choose "Report", and this will give you a URL link. People who have access to your workspace will also have access to the report. You can also add more people directly from this page.
Premium License
This is by far the most expensive option. However, it also grants you UNLIMITED POWER!
Ugh... I mean... it grants you the ability to share your dashboard with anyone, even if they don't have a license (any type of license). However, you still need to grant permissions to everyone you want to share it with (this prevents anyone from accessing it, removing the problem we had with Publish to Web).
If you are comparing license options, check out Power BI Pricing.
Sharing the PBIX file
Although not optimal in many cases, you can still always just share the PBIX file with anyone. Of course, anyone you share it with will need to have Power BI desktop installed. Further, they will probably not be able to refresh unless that have access to the underlying data sources (like SQL server, etc.).
Comments