Sharing Power BI Reports and Dashboards

Quick reference

• 00:05 Now that I have my dashboard set up in a PowerBI service, how do I share it?
• 00:10 Well, the first way to do it is I can come into the dashboard,
• 00:14 again navigate into my workspace, Find my Dashboard.
• 00:18 And then on the top right, I can go to Share.
• 00:21 And you'll notice that if you're working with a free account, you're gonna get hit
• 00:24 with this message, would you like to try Pro for free for 60 days?
• 00:27 Would you like to upgrade your account?
• 00:31 There's no reason not to try pro free for 60 days.
• 00:34 The question comes down to will you want to use it this way in the future?
• 00:38 And if you don't, if you try over cost-sensitive, the only alternative for
• 00:42 sharing these reports and whatnot.
• 00:43 Well, you have to share the report not the dashboard.
• 00:47 The only alternative for that would really is to go and
• 00:50 email the PBIX file that we created originally that was published.
• 00:54 We would email that to someone else.
• 00:55 Now they have to have access to the data source,
• 00:57 that means they can see the data and whatnot.
• 00:59 So it's kind of a toss-up there.
• 01:01 If you're looking at trying to share through the dashboard mechanism,
• 01:04 things change a little bit.
• 01:05 So I'm gonna click, Try Pro for Free, and
• 01:08 you'll notice that it says, would you like to start the trial?
• 01:10 I'll say, Yes.
• 01:12 And it says, hey great, it's been extended.
• 01:15 That's fantastic, and you don't need IT's permission to do that,
• 01:17 that would work just fine.
• 01:18 Now what you may need though, is you may need to convince IT later on.
• 01:21 That they should be buying you a license for
• 01:23 this, and that could be a different case.
• 01:25 So, we'll say, Close.
• 01:27 And nothing really looks all that different except
• 01:30 that now it takes me back to my Workspaces page.
• 01:32 So I'm gonna go back.
• 01:34 I'll take a look at my workspace.
• 01:35 We'll grab my Loaded Pencil database.
• 01:37 And now, once again, I'm gonna try again, Share.
• 01:41 And it says okay, who would you like to go and share with?
• 01:45 So I'm gonna try and type in GoSkills, and I'm gonna share it with
• 01:48 my GoSkills Consumer license here, who is also on a free license at the moment.
• 01:54 You'll notice,
• 01:55 at this point, that GoSkills Consumer is in the same domain that I am.
• 01:59 It's domain.
• 02:01 I get the option to say, would you like to allow them to share your dashboard?
• 02:04 And I'll say, you know what?
• 02:05 No, I wanna share it with the GoSkills Consumer,
• 02:07 but I don't want them to share it outside of that.
• 02:09 Would I like to send an email to them?
• 02:11 Well, you know what?
• 02:12 Yes, that's probably a useful thing to do, or
• 02:15 I could just email them a link to the dashboard as well.
• 02:18 They will need to sign in to see this, so I'm now gonna go and say, Share.
• 02:22 And at this point, it says it's been shared successfully.
• 02:26 Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go and
• 02:28 I'm going to create a new guest profile on my Chrome here.
• 02:32 And I'm gonna go to powerbi.com,
• 02:34 and we'll see what this particular user actually sees.
• 02:39 So we'll sign in, and I believe this one is goskillsr@excelguru.ca,
• 02:52 You'll notice that when this user comes in,
• 02:56 we don't really see a whole lot going on.
• 03:00 So if we go to Shared with me, we can see that, hey, you know what?
• 03:03 Somebody shared the loaded pencil database with me.
• 03:06 And I'm gonna try and click on it, and it says, sorry,
• 03:08 you need to upgrade your PowerBI license.
• 03:11 So not only does the author have to have a pro license, but
• 03:13 the end user does as well.
• 03:16 So I will say, okay, let's try pro for free over here as well and
• 03:19 we'll start the 60 day trial.
• 03:20 And this is where the license creep starts to come in and
• 03:23 you have to be concerned about.
• 03:24 But at the end of the day, it's not a bad thing.
• 03:27 So we'll go to shared with me, and we'll look at Loaded Pencil, and
• 03:32 you can see that the dashboard has been shared.
• 03:34 Now, again, I can't cross filter anything in here, but
• 03:37 if I click on Draft Beer, you'll notice that it takes me back to the report.
• 03:41 Again, this is in the consumer.
• 03:44 I can now then carefully cross filter all of the individual pieces.
• 03:48 But what if I wanted to share this with a different user or revoke permissions for
• 03:52 this user?
• 03:54 You know what?
• 03:54 We'll take a look.
• 03:55 I'm gonna close this particular window and
• 03:57 go back to the original account that shared this information.
• 04:01 So we're gonna try going to Share.
• 04:04 And this time, I'm gonna share this with somebody who is outside my domain.
• 04:08 So I'm gonna go with ken@powerbidemos.com.
• 04:12 And it says hey, this is outside your domain, and that's fine.
• 04:17 So I'm just gonna scroll down here and it says,
• 04:19 would you like to allow recipients to share your dashboard?
• 04:21 I'm gonna say no, I want control of that.
• 04:23 This is really important though, you must send this email.
• 04:27 If you don't, this person will have no way to find this, okay?
• 04:30 You can't even send them this dashboard link you need to send the email to
• 04:33 this thing.
• 04:34 So we're gonna say Share, and at this point,
• 04:37 it will send them an email, which I will now go and dig out.
• 04:41 So I've copied the link for my email.
• 04:43 I'm gonna paste it into a new browser window and hit Enter.
• 04:46 Now you'll notice that I get sent to the site where it tells me that I need to Sign
• 04:50 up or Sign in.
• 04:51 So I will Sign in.
• 04:53 I already have an account.
• 04:56 And I'm gonna sign in as ken@powerbidemos.com with my password.
• 05:05 Now, you're gonna notice here that some things look a little bit different.
• 05:10 First off, we see the dashboard and it's got our tile for
• 05:12 latest date way over on the side here, which is fine.
• 05:15 If I click on one of the categories,
• 05:18 it will take me into the report which again still cross filters.
• 05:22 You'll notice that the visuals here cannot be pinned, it won't let us do that.
• 05:27 So it says if I announce over carefully read only content can't be pinned.
• 05:31 The other thing that you'll notice is that this interface looks a little
• 05:34 bit different.
• 05:35 I can still do certain things with files like print it, or embed it, export it, and
• 05:39 whatnot.
• 05:40 But notice up here, I don't actually have this waffle icon.
• 05:44 And that's kind of important, because you'll see down the left hand side,
• 05:47 I have no navigation.
• 05:48 There's no option to find this shared with me area.
• 05:51 If I click on this,
• 05:53 it will take me back to the PowerBI account for ken@powerbidemos,
• 05:58 which helpfully has a notification that I can activate the trial.
• 06:03 But under shared with me, you'll notice there's no content shared with me.
• 06:08 So this is the challenge when you share with an external party is that you do not
• 06:13 get this shared into the Shared with me hive.
• 06:16 So if they lose that email link, it's gone, okay?
• 06:18 Now, what about managing sharing?
• 06:22 So, we're back again with our original GoSkills user.
• 06:25 If I go again and say Share, you'll notice under the Share tab,
• 06:30 there's also an Access tab.
• 06:33 And in here, you can see who I've shared this with.
• 06:36 Author GoSkills is me, I'm the owner.
• 06:38 You'll notice the I've shared it with consumer GoSkills.
• 06:41 I have the ability to go in and enable reshares or even stop sharing altogether.
• 06:47 This other one though, external consumer, I can stop sharing with it.
• 06:51 I notice that they can view the dashboard, but all I get as far as who this is,
• 06:57 is external consumer and that they're a guest.
• 06:59 That's it, I can't tell who it was.
• 07:01 There's no way to actually retrieve retrieve the email address for
• 07:03 who I shared it with, which is unfortunate.
• 07:05 But I'm gonna stop sharing this one as well.
• 07:07 So now, I am the owner, I know my dashboard has not been shared.
• 07:10 So I don't have to worry about it going anywhere or
• 07:12 losing control of it at this point.

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