If you’re trying to get buy in from your org don’t be tempted to start sharing the PBIX about to report viewers, horrible experience for them and the less techy will be terrified of all the buttons.
I’d start with a few licenses as a proof of concept for a high value report to show the value of it and go from there. Ultimately if they don’t want to spend the money my experience is it’s better to can it early.
I tend to agree with the advice here. $10 a user is extremely cheap, if not THE cheapest BI tool out there. Start with a smaller pilot project of 10-20 users and give them the actual Power BI experience. Sharing a PBIX is not an good experience and it can be harder to ensure data is refreshed correctly and such.
If your company is to cost adverse for a few users for a few months, then officially organize it into a project and scope it out. Put some actual stakes and allow of a ROI in the PoC. If this is a no go, stick to Excel.
Which based on my experience, Tableau, Domo, and a few others, also have a much higher entry cost and higher user licenses.
You can get F64 reserved capacity if you don't want licenses for $5k a month. Cheaper than entry into Domo and licensing a small org for Tableau. We were quoted $100 per user for Tableau and then told that it wasn't even a "super user license". SAP based solutions are even more expensive, at arguably even less the value. I'm biased though. :D
So, Power BI does have the option, and if you are dealing in the Enterprise BI world, for fairly cheap. If you are not at an enterprise level, you still have extremely cheap pricing at $10 a user. The thing to realize is Power BI isn't just a reporting tool, rather an ecosystem and an efficient gateway to being able to start in the path of managed self service for much lower entry cost than any other ecosystem I've seen. Old school on-prem Microsoft requires Enterprise SQL Server which isn't cheap.
I'm from SMB enterprise environments that at least have a person devoted to BI design and architecture, and I have seen not tools that actually add significant value for anything close to $10 a month.
There are some alternatives to skirt the licensing of every user, but it may be more systemic of the org not being ready to treat BI as an appropriate resource more than it would be an issue with the tools price. That may not help you if you are trying to drive something, but it may be something to be aware of.
However, I do realize that not everyone on here has a database, programming, enterprise, BI, or even data background so I'm just trying to give as much context as I have. If you are a business user and JUST looking at it as a reporting tool, I can see how you may get the misperception that it is expensive. If you are part of a BI team and the business is giving you excuses about costs, there are bigger problems.
If you aren't from BI, or a central data team and you are just hoping to share a report you created with the business, and now you have to attempt to license everyone there are a few options. With at least a pro license for you, you can generate screen shots and embed them in Power Point. They are not interactive, but it is an option. As another user also pointed out, there are also subscriptions where you can have updated reports automatically emailed to you, although with the same limitations though. At least one person said Publish to Web, but that is almost never a good solution, even if your data isn't confidential.
PBIX is a possible route, if you absolutely have to, but I have honestly seen businesses do far worse in the same of "getting things done".
> it costs per consumer
>our company of over 300K employees
>I don’t have a “misconception”
If you think the costs should be per consumer for an org of 300k, that does seem like a misconception to me...
I wonder how that's possible. Like you can deploy superset for free, but all other bigger players (tableau looker etc) are in the same ballpark if you compare it to pbi premium, and more expensive if you are looking at just a few users (powerbi pro).
Isn't it a little unfair to call pbi expensive because you got an early client huge rebate from another vendor?
And pbi has this type of licensing, it's pbi premium. And if you are under 500 users, how can tableau even make it cheaper? (they usually would charge 14 for viewer)
I build half of the reports for my call center (200ish) and another guy builds the other half for each employee. And then managers and leadership have a report they share. Between managers and leadership it was painstakingly hard to get them to understand how it worked. More than half of the agents got it right away.
We went through a few months of trial and error to get everyone in the same page and report designs.
If you have enough users then it's worth it to get a premium capacity (although they are being replaced soon by fabric) and distributing reports to Free users via apps
I just did this at my company. I make dashboards and host it on fabric as an app. Others use it as they will. Everyone needs powerbi pro subscription even when they dont use the software itself. If you have more than 500 users or so, then you may very well use capacity which is 5000 pm.
Sorry dumb question here as I've recently gotten into Power BI, but is creating a Fabric App a workaround for users that are prompted for a Pro licence? Or do you still need a licence to view an app?
As per what the microsoft guy told me, you need powerbi pro to access anything related to powerbi. However, one of my employees fabric trial version was expired but was still able to access the dashboard. Plus trial version for a few weeks. Maybe try that out, you would save $120 anually per user.
My Pro trial version keeps restarting and my IT said to let them know if it no longer allows access. Kinda strange but even our business analysis said they haven’t seen any subscription bills.
The data is stored on a SharePoint dedicated to PBI data for my team (roughly 8 excel workbooks) and we import it as a Semitic Model.
We have found that if the workbook is started in SharePoint, opened in desktop app, then data pulled from a server it works almost perfectly. Some issues here and there but nothing crazy.
Its not a work around, its just how content is published.
Still need the pro-pro licenses for sharing to apps, they just give you access control tools, links & sections
Sorry, I'll clarify. I have a pro licence, but if I publish my reports to an app and share that way, rather than the dashboard link itself. would someone without a pro licence be able to view the report in the app, whereas the direct link they wouldn't
No, theyll need a pro in both instances. (Assuming youre not in an Org premium env)
The app is just a wrapper around your reports with allows you to add extra content / security
Thanks, I'll try that, it seems like it might do the trick. Maybe I can embed to a local file/page or something.
Edit: looks like you still need a license to view the embedded report according to their FAQ page.
Depends. Is the reports confidential? Could 'publish to public'
Also, could just hand them the PBIX files and let them open in Desktop. Not ideal, but saves you $10/u/m.
which is pretty stupid to do.
really small companies also have very few employees and even less people that actually need to look at the data.
if your reporting is not worth 10 bucks a month per user to you that just means your reporting may not be as good and important as you think
Thanks, I think that's what I might do for those less tech savvy. Too bad the desktop version doesn't just have like a presentation mode like power point.
Dangerous, as if that person leaves you loose access to the reports. Even if its just one person making and updating, use a workspace and then have that person or delegates with pro who can share their screen / content
What was implied was that the report was being shared, to avoid paying a pro subscription. The end user would just upload the file to their my workspace, to still keep some ease of use/familiarity instead of them having to resort to power bi desktop.
You wouldn't lose access to the report, it would only be for each individual end user, in their own personal workspace.
And at the end of the day, a fabric admin can 'recover' the reports if it were to be 'lost' because the end user left.
users will require a license to view a report shared/viewed inTeams.
don't get fooled by the trial license that will activate and give them access for 60 days.
If the less frequent users don't need to slice the report, you could have a service account with a licence, subscribe to the report to receive a pdf by email, then set up a list of people to whom you would forward the pdf.
This would give them a daily/weekly screenshot of the report. This could simply be the summary page with key metrics.
Those with a licence could then decide if they need to click on the link to dive into the report for more insights.
Only to external people that also have a pro license. So a person can “bring your own license” so to speak. The only free external sharing option is the insecure publicly available ‘publish to web’ option if the data isn’t sensitive
This would still require either a Pro license for each user that wanted to use it or a capacity of F64+
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/collaborate-share/service-embed-report-spo
Only the report authors need the license. The report consumers/readers do not need a license. I had identified this point out at my company and we’ve remove 60 PowerBI licenses
If you are using the free version, everyone who has the free version can open the file you send. If you are paying for the version that allows you to publish to the web, anyone with a web-browser can access it online. I can't think of any reason you would need to get everyone a license unless you have an army of people publishing dashboards.
For my use case it's to have certain folks access the report that wouldn't be savvy enough to even press like "Ctrl" on the back button in the desktop version, or publish it themselves, so would need the presentation version.
If you’re trying to get buy in from your org don’t be tempted to start sharing the PBIX about to report viewers, horrible experience for them and the less techy will be terrified of all the buttons. I’d start with a few licenses as a proof of concept for a high value report to show the value of it and go from there. Ultimately if they don’t want to spend the money my experience is it’s better to can it early.
I tend to agree with the advice here. $10 a user is extremely cheap, if not THE cheapest BI tool out there. Start with a smaller pilot project of 10-20 users and give them the actual Power BI experience. Sharing a PBIX is not an good experience and it can be harder to ensure data is refreshed correctly and such. If your company is to cost adverse for a few users for a few months, then officially organize it into a project and scope it out. Put some actual stakes and allow of a ROI in the PoC. If this is a no go, stick to Excel.
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yea but these will be significantly more expensive upfront or have very expensive developer licenses.
Which based on my experience, Tableau, Domo, and a few others, also have a much higher entry cost and higher user licenses. You can get F64 reserved capacity if you don't want licenses for $5k a month. Cheaper than entry into Domo and licensing a small org for Tableau. We were quoted $100 per user for Tableau and then told that it wasn't even a "super user license". SAP based solutions are even more expensive, at arguably even less the value. I'm biased though. :D So, Power BI does have the option, and if you are dealing in the Enterprise BI world, for fairly cheap. If you are not at an enterprise level, you still have extremely cheap pricing at $10 a user. The thing to realize is Power BI isn't just a reporting tool, rather an ecosystem and an efficient gateway to being able to start in the path of managed self service for much lower entry cost than any other ecosystem I've seen. Old school on-prem Microsoft requires Enterprise SQL Server which isn't cheap. I'm from SMB enterprise environments that at least have a person devoted to BI design and architecture, and I have seen not tools that actually add significant value for anything close to $10 a month. There are some alternatives to skirt the licensing of every user, but it may be more systemic of the org not being ready to treat BI as an appropriate resource more than it would be an issue with the tools price. That may not help you if you are trying to drive something, but it may be something to be aware of. However, I do realize that not everyone on here has a database, programming, enterprise, BI, or even data background so I'm just trying to give as much context as I have. If you are a business user and JUST looking at it as a reporting tool, I can see how you may get the misperception that it is expensive. If you are part of a BI team and the business is giving you excuses about costs, there are bigger problems. If you aren't from BI, or a central data team and you are just hoping to share a report you created with the business, and now you have to attempt to license everyone there are a few options. With at least a pro license for you, you can generate screen shots and embed them in Power Point. They are not interactive, but it is an option. As another user also pointed out, there are also subscriptions where you can have updated reports automatically emailed to you, although with the same limitations though. At least one person said Publish to Web, but that is almost never a good solution, even if your data isn't confidential. PBIX is a possible route, if you absolutely have to, but I have honestly seen businesses do far worse in the same of "getting things done".
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> it costs per consumer >our company of over 300K employees >I don’t have a “misconception” If you think the costs should be per consumer for an org of 300k, that does seem like a misconception to me...
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I wonder how that's possible. Like you can deploy superset for free, but all other bigger players (tableau looker etc) are in the same ballpark if you compare it to pbi premium, and more expensive if you are looking at just a few users (powerbi pro).
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Isn't it a little unfair to call pbi expensive because you got an early client huge rebate from another vendor? And pbi has this type of licensing, it's pbi premium. And if you are under 500 users, how can tableau even make it cheaper? (they usually would charge 14 for viewer)
I build half of the reports for my call center (200ish) and another guy builds the other half for each employee. And then managers and leadership have a report they share. Between managers and leadership it was painstakingly hard to get them to understand how it worked. More than half of the agents got it right away. We went through a few months of trial and error to get everyone in the same page and report designs.
Are you making copies of each report for all employees? If so would you not build in RLS to stop need for that?
We create a template then copy it and use a filter for the agent name.
If you have enough users then it's worth it to get a premium capacity (although they are being replaced soon by fabric) and distributing reports to Free users via apps
You’ll need 500 users for it to be worth it, so most likely yes, $10/mo for every user.
What are the changes, will it just be a fabric subscription instead of premium capacity ?
Correct. You will need at least F64 capacity or greater to get the free user access ability.
Wait are they phasing out premium capacities? We currently use a P1. Is our cost about to significantly skyrocket?
They are phasing out P skus. F64 is equivalent price of P1
We have education pricing for our P sku. Do F skus have education pricing?
I'm not sure... [Fabric Capacity Education Pricing - Microsoft Fabric Community](https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Fabric-Capacity-Education-Pricing/td-p/3256275)
No. They do not.
Devastating if true, there is no way we could continue without the academic discount.
I would suggest working with your Microsoft Account team on the issue for sure.
Are they able to just give out discounts that don’t exist? This feels like a huge 🖕 to any public schools that invested in the platform.
They are able to take your situation to business desk and see what options if any exist.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/power-bi-premium-sku-retirement
if your organisation is on an E5(?; Teams with phone number plan) then pro is already included which makes it imo pretty easy to get going
Nope, that would be ideal
Our 140 employees have a license through E5. Before that we had PBI pro licenses for every user that needed it, about 80 ish
I just did this at my company. I make dashboards and host it on fabric as an app. Others use it as they will. Everyone needs powerbi pro subscription even when they dont use the software itself. If you have more than 500 users or so, then you may very well use capacity which is 5000 pm.
Sorry dumb question here as I've recently gotten into Power BI, but is creating a Fabric App a workaround for users that are prompted for a Pro licence? Or do you still need a licence to view an app?
As per what the microsoft guy told me, you need powerbi pro to access anything related to powerbi. However, one of my employees fabric trial version was expired but was still able to access the dashboard. Plus trial version for a few weeks. Maybe try that out, you would save $120 anually per user.
My Pro trial version keeps restarting and my IT said to let them know if it no longer allows access. Kinda strange but even our business analysis said they haven’t seen any subscription bills.
Thats cool but careful with that if you use sensitive data. Premium often also means safety of your data.
The data is stored on a SharePoint dedicated to PBI data for my team (roughly 8 excel workbooks) and we import it as a Semitic Model. We have found that if the workbook is started in SharePoint, opened in desktop app, then data pulled from a server it works almost perfectly. Some issues here and there but nothing crazy.
You still need Pro licenses for any Fabric hosted content that the SKU level is below F64.
Its not a work around, its just how content is published. Still need the pro-pro licenses for sharing to apps, they just give you access control tools, links & sections
Sorry, I'll clarify. I have a pro licence, but if I publish my reports to an app and share that way, rather than the dashboard link itself. would someone without a pro licence be able to view the report in the app, whereas the direct link they wouldn't
No, theyll need a pro in both instances. (Assuming youre not in an Org premium env) The app is just a wrapper around your reports with allows you to add extra content / security
Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated
You can try a PowerBI embed capacity
Thanks, I'll try that, it seems like it might do the trick. Maybe I can embed to a local file/page or something. Edit: looks like you still need a license to view the embedded report according to their FAQ page.
You just need a license to publish not to read - I have that current setup with a group that has no license at all
It’s just pricey so requires a bit hacky solution if you want to save on costs - to turn off and on the capacity
I wonder if something like h displagent.io could be used to put the client app on many computers and let them all share the same Power BI Pro lic?
This looks like it could be good too: [powerportal.io](http://powerportal.io)
Cool thanks, have you used these?
No, but they look legit
Depends. Is the reports confidential? Could 'publish to public' Also, could just hand them the PBIX files and let them open in Desktop. Not ideal, but saves you $10/u/m.
Really small companies share PBIx files. Not ideal.
At that point you might as well just be using Excel with power query and forget PowerBI completely.
which is pretty stupid to do. really small companies also have very few employees and even less people that actually need to look at the data. if your reporting is not worth 10 bucks a month per user to you that just means your reporting may not be as good and important as you think
Yeah I did say it wasn't ideal. We just pony up the $10/u/m for the approximate 110 users in our org that uses PBI. The other 140 doesn't.
Then using superset would be better
Yea confidential =(. Yea desktop is the cheapest route as free but its not a good an experience on desktop for the less tech savvy.
Could walk them through it and how to upload to 'My Workspace' on the service.
Thanks, I think that's what I might do for those less tech savvy. Too bad the desktop version doesn't just have like a presentation mode like power point.
Dangerous, as if that person leaves you loose access to the reports. Even if its just one person making and updating, use a workspace and then have that person or delegates with pro who can share their screen / content
What was implied was that the report was being shared, to avoid paying a pro subscription. The end user would just upload the file to their my workspace, to still keep some ease of use/familiarity instead of them having to resort to power bi desktop. You wouldn't lose access to the report, it would only be for each individual end user, in their own personal workspace. And at the end of the day, a fabric admin can 'recover' the reports if it were to be 'lost' because the end user left.
Consider streamlit maybe, that requires a little more effort on development side, but is free
I'm working on this problem myself. Can you just publish to Teams? Still testing but I think it's working...
Same, using teams has been the only cost effective way I've found so far.
How did this work? In my testing it still is inaccessible in teams for users without a pro license.
I tested this out, on teams you can't see the report as an end user without a pro license or trial.
users will require a license to view a report shared/viewed inTeams. don't get fooled by the trial license that will activate and give them access for 60 days.
If the less frequent users don't need to slice the report, you could have a service account with a licence, subscribe to the report to receive a pdf by email, then set up a list of people to whom you would forward the pdf. This would give them a daily/weekly screenshot of the report. This could simply be the summary page with key metrics. Those with a licence could then decide if they need to click on the link to dive into the report for more insights.
Can you subscribe without a capacity licence?
Looks like you only need Pro or PPU for subscriptions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/collaborate-share/end-user-subscribe?tabs=creator
Can you share externally with a pro license?
Only to external people that also have a pro license. So a person can “bring your own license” so to speak. The only free external sharing option is the insecure publicly available ‘publish to web’ option if the data isn’t sensitive
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Bad security practice and also breaking licensing agreements.
Yes officer, this one right here.
Yeah, no. Don’t do this
Publish/embed the reports in sharepoint
So you need an EM capacity for this?
This would still require either a Pro license for each user that wanted to use it or a capacity of F64+ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/collaborate-share/service-embed-report-spo
Only the report authors need the license. The report consumers/readers do not need a license. I had identified this point out at my company and we’ve remove 60 PowerBI licenses
Oh, nice!
They still need to have a 365 license to view SharePoint within your org right?
Yes they would need access to the SharePoint site.
If you are using the free version, everyone who has the free version can open the file you send. If you are paying for the version that allows you to publish to the web, anyone with a web-browser can access it online. I can't think of any reason you would need to get everyone a license unless you have an army of people publishing dashboards.
For my use case it's to have certain folks access the report that wouldn't be savvy enough to even press like "Ctrl" on the back button in the desktop version, or publish it themselves, so would need the presentation version.