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Power BI Mastery

Publishing, Sharing and Security

Lesson 9 of 10

A report in Power BI Desktop is a file on your computer. To share it, you publish it to the Power BI service.

Publish

Choose Home > Publish and select a workspace. Two items appear in the service: the report and the semantic model it is built on.

Workspaces

A workspace is a container for related content.

  • My workspace is your personal area.
  • Shared workspaces are for teams. Members are given a role: Admin, Member, Contributor or Viewer.

Give people the lowest role that lets them do their job. Viewers can read but not edit.

Ways to share

Method Use it when
Share a report link A few people need one report
Workspace access Colleagues build content together
App You distribute a finished set of reports to many readers
Export to PDF or PowerPoint A static copy is required
Embed in Teams or SharePoint Readers should see it where they already work

An app packages selected reports from a workspace behind a navigation menu and separates what readers see from work in progress.

Sharing content generally requires a paid licence for both the person sharing and the reader, unless the workspace is hosted on a capacity that allows readers with free licences. Check your organisation’s licensing before planning distribution.

Dashboards

In the service you can pin visuals from one or more reports onto a dashboard, a single page of tiles. Dashboards exist only in the service.

Keeping data current

An imported model holds a copy of the data, so it must be refreshed.

  • In the semantic model’s settings, set a scheduled refresh with the days and times you need.
  • Data stored on your organisation’s own network needs an on-premises data gateway, software that lets the service reach the source securely.
  • Cloud sources usually need only stored credentials.
  • Check the refresh history for failures, and turn on failure notifications.

Row-level security

Row-level security (RLS) restricts which rows a person can see. Everyone uses the same report but sees only their own data.

Define roles in Power BI Desktop. Choose Modeling > Manage roles, create a role and add a DAX filter to a table:

[Region] = "North"

Make it dynamic. To avoid one role per region, keep a table that maps each user’s sign-in email to a region, and filter on the current user:

[Email] = USERPRINCIPALNAME ()

Test. Choose Modeling > View as and pick a role to check the result.

Assign people. After publishing, open the semantic model’s Security settings in the service and add users or groups to each role.

RLS applies to people with read access. Members who can edit the workspace content are not restricted by it.

Before you publish

  • Remove unused tables, columns and visuals.
  • Check that every measure has a format and every visual a title.
  • Confirm that refresh works from the service, not only from your computer.
  • Test with a Viewer account, and with each security role.

Practice

Define a role that limits Sales to one region and use View as to confirm the totals change.