Chapter 11 · 8 levels
Power BI Service, sharing and security
Publish from Desktop to the Power BI Service, pick the right licence, give people the right workspace role, package reports as an app with audiences, keep data fresh with scheduled refresh and gateways, and write static and dynamic row-level security.
StartA report on your laptop helps one person. Harbor & Pine needs the same report on forty managers’ screens every morning, refreshed overnight, and each manager should see only the customers they are responsible for. That is the job of the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com): the cloud half of Power BI, where reports are stored, shared, refreshed and secured.
This chapter follows a report out of Desktop. You decide who needs which licence to publish and to read, which workspace role each colleague gets, and when a workspace, an app or a dashboard is the right thing to share. You keep the data fresh with scheduled refresh and a gateway, and you learn what is safe when someone outside the company asks for access.
Then comes the part analysts get asked about in every Power BI interview: row-level security. You write the rules that hide rows from people who shouldn’t see them, first as a fixed list of states, then as one dynamic rule that reads the signed-in user’s email and looks up their territory. The Service itself needs a work account, so the security levels run in a practice tool on this page: you write the rule, and the visual shows what each person would see. Every lesson gives the exact place to do it for real in Power BI Desktop and the Service. The boss level secures the B2B sales report for a team of account reps and their manager.
Levels
- Publish a report and pick the licences
from Ryan Cooper, Regional Sales Manager
power bi service, publish, licences, pro, premium per user, capacity
- Give each colleague the right workspace role
from Monica Alvarez, Head of Analytics
workspace, workspace roles, admin, member, contributor, viewer, least privilege
- Workspace, app or dashboard?
from Derek Thompson, VP of Sales
workspace, power bi app, app audiences, dashboard, sharing
- A row-level security role for the West
from Gregory Hall, West Region Sales Director
row level security, rls, manage roles, static rls, filter propagation, in operator
- One dynamic rule for every territory
from Jessica Turner, Head of Sales Operations
row level security, dynamic rls, userprincipalname, lookupvalue, security table
- Who row-level security applies to
from Brian Foster, IT Security Lead
row level security, workspace roles, viewer, view as, test as role, security
- Scheduled refresh, gateways and outside guests
from Stephanie Ward, Finance Controller
scheduled refresh, on premises data gateway, credentials, b2b guest, publish to web
- Boss: secure the B2B sales report
from Marcus Bennett, Head of B2B Sales
row level security, static rls, dynamic rls, userprincipalname, lookupvalue, var, boss