Power BI Report Sharing Simplified Part Two

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Consultant’s Corner

Welcome back to Quorum’s Consultant’s Corner, a place where our Consulting team can drop knowledge, talk about the issues that are currently on their minds, give us an insight into their passions, or just have a good old rant.

Today, Robert French returns to Consultant’s Corner for part two of his short series on sharing Power BI reports. This topic is of utmost importance for Office 365 administrators and organisations interested in Power BI report sharing.

Robert French

Chief Power BI Nerd

Previously, we delved into the intricacies of sharing reports using either Power BI Pro licences or an F-64 SKU or above which can be found here.

In this article, we’re going to explore some lesser-known sharing options that I believe need further clarification. These options are available, but how to use them is not always straightforward.

EM-SKU

This particular family of SKUs might be of interest to specific organisations looking to share reports using a Fabric Free licence under certain specific circumstances. The reports can only be placed in Teams or SharePoint Online and CANNOT be viewed in the Power BI service unless they have a Power BI Pro licence. The reports can only be shared within the organisation that has purchased the SKU and cannot be shared with other organisations.

The only SKU that an Office 365 administrator can purchase and only sold to Office 365 volume customers via specific vendors are:

EM-1 SKU

EM-2 SKU

EM-3 SKU*

* EM-3 SKU can be bought via the Office 365 portal by any Office 365 customer (they do not require to be an Office 365 volume customer). The monthly cost of the EM-3 SKU (as of June 2024) is approximately £2.4k.

F-SKU (Pay as You Go)

This option has many benefits, but there are also some disadvantages to be aware of. This SKU can be purchased from the Azure Portal under a Pay as You Go payment model. If the SKU is running, you will pay for it, but you can pause the SKU, which incurs no additional cost. However, any reports in a workspace with a paused F-SKU cannot be viewed until the SKU is reactivated. Another advantage is that you can scale the power of the SKU up and down to suit demands, but please note that the larger the SKU, the more it costs to run.

One of the considerations with the F-SKU is that admins will need to manage all the secure validation for users who want to view the reports, if they are not members of the organisations Entra domain.

This method is particularly suited for embedding into websites or applications. If you opt for this approach, you will need the expertise of a web developer to embed the report into the website or application. See this article.

Publish to the Web

Some online posts claim that this method can help you publish Power BI reports for free. This method can make Power BI reports available online, but you should be aware that it has no security at all. If a report is published using this method, anyone on the internet can view the report and its data. Although it may be a suitable solution for some specific reports under certain circumstances, it’s important to consider the risks involved before using it in your organisation.

For example, would you feel comfortable publishing confidential financial information using this method? While some organisations have done so, it is crucial to understand the lack of security.

Now we have discussed some other features in Power BI let’s look what we can techniques to share Power BI reports. These techniques are different from those that we have discussed in the first article.

Technique One

Purchase an EM-SKU, this will allow an organisation to share reports for free with all users in that organisation. The reports can only be accessed via Microsoft Teams or in SharePoint Online. Note that a minimum of one Power BI licence will be required to publish and edit reports.

Technique Two

Purchase an F-SKU (Pay as You Go) and configure an application or website to pass the security details to the Power BI service. This will then allow you to share reports with anyone outside of your organisation.

Technique Three

Enable and then use the Publish to the Web feature that is part of the Power BI service. Ensure that you understand that there is no security whatsoever with this technique and that any report and associated data published using this technique is in the public domain.

Quorum is here to help

On the surface, selecting the correct Power BI licence type is a simple task. There are many different things to consider when choosing a Power BI licence or capacity.

If you want to know more or just chat with some friendly, knowledgeable Power BI experts? Then book a free one-hour consultation with our team of Power BI specialists who can guide you to the right solution for your company.