Best Practices for Delivering and
Sharing Content in Power BI
Melissa Coates
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Melissa Coates
Solution Architect, BlueGranite
Blog: SQLChick.com
Co-founder & volunteer: Charlotte BI Group
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Objectives
Understand the definition of Understand options for:
and options for: ✓Personal BI
✓Sharing ✓Small teams
✓Collaboration ✓Large teams
✓Distribution ✓Enterprise
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Agenda
Most common capabilities: Diagram Demo
❑ My workspace
The textual slides in this deck are for
❑ Sharing takeaway purposes only.
❑ App workspace (focus on new experience)
❑ Apps
Additional content delivery options:
❑ Power BI Premium
❑ Power BI Report Server
❑ Embedded solutions
❑ Other options & techniques
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More Details Available in Whitepaper
Many of the diagrams & concepts we’ll
discuss today are contained in this
whitepaper, which was coauthored with
Chris Webb. V2 was released in July.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/power-bi/whitepapers
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My Workspace
A personal area in the Power BI Service dedicated to each
Power BI user.
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My Workspace: Personal BI
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Demo
My Workspace
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Where to Locate Mission-Critical Content
Don’t store content which is critical to the
Best
company in My Workspace.
Practice
Why
? Only one
owner can
edit My
Workspace.
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File Names
Best Distinguish personal copies in the file name so that you
Practice have unique file names.
Examples:
• Sales Report (App Workspace)
• Sales Report – Personal Copy (My Workspace)
Why
? Reduces confusion when there are similar reports
across workspaces.
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File Names
Keep your file names consistent each time you publish.
Best
Practice
Do *not* implement versioning as part of the file name.
Ex: SalesReport_20180731
Why
? Dependencies in the Power BI Service. Ex:
• Data refresh schedules
• Visuals pinned from a report to a dashboard
• Reports created from a dataset
• Live Connection to a Power BI dataset
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Storing Original Files
Best place to retain original PBIX and XLSX files:
Best
• Backed up location
Practice
• Versioning built in
Store original files in a central location where the
Best
Practice path is the same for everyone.
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Sharing
The act of granting read-only access to individual reports &
dashboards to others. Also the name of an actual feature.
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Sharing in the Power BI Service
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Demo
Sharing
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Sharing
Sharing is best suited to informal scenarios where content
Best
is shared with just a few people. It is intended primarily for
Practice
users who know each other.
Workspaces and apps are better suited when content
Why
? needs to be distributed to a larger number of people
(discussed in the next sections).
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Sharing from My Workspace
Use sharing from My Workspace *very* sparingly.
Best
Types of content: proof of concept, personal items, or
Practice
a temporary analysis.
Only one person (the owner of My Workspace) can
Why
? manage, edit, and share the content. If this person leaves,
the content could be lost and/or recipients experience a
disruption in content availability.
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Sharing from App Workspace
Use sharing from App Workspace only when:
Best
• You want to allow read-only access to
Practice
individual pieces of content
• You don’t want recipient(s) to see everything
in the workspace
Why
? Sharing is done on individual reports & dashboards, which
can become hard to manage.
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Sharing and Re-Sharing
If someone shares content with a user who only has a
FYI Free account, the recipient will be prompted to start a
Power BI pro trial in order to view the content. There is
no licensing validation done at the time of sharing.
The ability to re-share is enabled by default.
FYI
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Immediate Visibility to Changes
Content changes are visible immediately to recipients
FYI of a share (as opposed to Apps which require
republishing).
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V1=My workspace or existing app workspace
Sharing Permissions V2 =New workspace experience in preview
V1 V2
Individual (within organization or outside of or using B2B)
Distribution list
Security group
Mail-enabled security group
Office 365 group (aka modern group)
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No ‘Sharing’ from Power BI Desktop
Although the label on the ribbon says ‘Share’ it has
FYI
nothing to do with the Sharing feature.
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Tenant Settings Which Affect Sharing
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App Workspace
In the Power BI Service, collaboration among multiple persons
creating and testing content occurs in an App Workspace.
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App Workspace for Team Collaboration
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New Workspace Experience
V1 Workspace
• Requires creation of an Office 365 group (modern group)
• Only individuals can be assigned for security
• All members can edit or view (not by individual person)
V2 New Workspace Experience -- in Public Preview
• Decoupled from Office 365 groups
• More flexible security group assignments
• More granular edit/view permissions (by individual)
• Workspace users automatically see an App
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Demo
Workspace: Content Collaboration
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Workspace Permissions in the New Experience
Admin Member Contributor Viewer
Edit/delete workspace
Add members
Share
Publish/update apps
Add/edit/delete content
View content at GA
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Workspace Access
V1 V2
Individual (within organization or outside of or using B2B)
Distribution list
Security group
Mail-enabled security group
Office 365 group (aka modern group)
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Workspace Purpose
The purpose of workspaces are for collaboration on content
Best
(datasets, reports, dashboards). Ex:
Practice
• One user publishes dataset with calcs, relationships, etc.
• Another user publishes reports
• Another user tests content for QA purposes
Collaboration involves multiple people taking an active part
Why
? in report design, not just passive consumption of content.
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Separating Dataset from Reports
Since the skills for dataset creation (relationships, data
Best
modeling, DAX calculations) differs from report
Practice
development skills, it can be beneficial to separate out
the dataset from the reports – i.e., two PBIX files.
This can facilitate better collaboration when the roles
are performed by different people, and it sets you up
for dataset reuse.
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Workspace Purpose & Scope
Best Workspace scope shouldn’t be too narrow, nor too broad.
Practice
Why
? Think of a workspace as a boundary for logical
content groups as well as a security boundary.
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Workspace Naming
Best Use a descriptive name that represents the group of reports.
Practice Ex:
• Finance Department Reports
• Product Launch Reports
• Social Media Sentiment Analysis
Don’t include “app workspace” or “workspace” in the name.
Why
? If you publish an App, it inherits the name of the workspace.
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Managing Original Content
Users who have permissions to edit content can do so
Best
directly within the Power BI Service.
Practice
• Keep # of authors to a manageable number, and
• Create a standard practice for editing & publishing
content, and
• Routinely download the .pbix from the Power BI
Service before making edits in Power BI Desktop if
there’s a chance the content changed
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Workspace Limitations
Workspaces are “flat” structures. There are no folders,
nor any hierarchical organization.
Viewer role (read-only access to workspace content) is
not available during preview – will be at GA.
Content packs (on a deprecation path) are not
supported in the new workspace experience.
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Workspace Limitations
Related content constrained to one workspace.
However, that will change with Dataset Discovery:
✓ Reuse a dataset across many workspaces
✓ Connect a report to a dataset in another workspace
✓ Promote datasets for discovery & certify datasets
Workspace 2 Workspace 1 Workspace 3
Report Dataset Report
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Transition Period
There’s a transition period between V1 workspaces and the
FYI new workspace experience. At some point there will be a
required migration.
The concept of read-only workspaces (i.e., when all
FYI
members are set to read-only) is going away. It is being
replaced by the Viewer permission in the new workspace
experience, which is far more flexible on an individual user
basis.
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Tenant Settings Which Affect Workspaces
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Workspace vs App
Best Small teams: Using a workspace for collaboration plus
Practice distribution works pretty well for small teams. This
simplifies things when an App isn’t needed.
Larger teams: However, at some point, using an App
begins to make more sense vs. using a workspace for
everything. Apps are covered next.
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App
A more ‘formal’ method of broad content distribution to many users.
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Apps for Content Distribution
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Demo
App: Content Distribution
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Simplifying Permissions Management
Best Use Apps for delivery of read-only content more
Practice frequently than Sharing – especially when there are
several pieces of related content.
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Handling Permissions in Large Environments
Best Workspace:
Practice Limit access to the workspace to those who are
handling authoring, development, and testing.
App:
All read-only users obtain access via the App only.
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App Limitations
One app can be created from one workspace.
An app cannot be “personalized” (i.e., save as to create
a personal version of a report or dashboard) yet.
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Managing Content Changes
Dataset changes always take effect immediately
FYI whereas reports & dashboards require republishing.
This includes data
refresh, as well as
DAX calculation
changes,
relationship
changes, etc.
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Tenant Settings Which Affect Apps
Push Apps is
disabled by
default because
overzealous app
publishers could
diminish user
experience if too
much content Consider enabling selective
Best
“just shows up.” Practice groups of authors.
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Power BI Premium
Dedicated resources in the Power BI Service to address workload
demands of larger enterprise deployments.
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Premium Capacity
• Read-only free users
• Dedicated hardware
• Larger storage volumes
• Larger dataset sizes
• Higher refresh rates
• Incremental data refresh
• RDL report integration
• Power BI Report Server
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Read-Only Users
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Managing Capacities
Best Consider using multiple smaller capacities for
Practice workload isolation.
Best Prioritize datasets for Premium which might soon
Practice exceed shared capacity dataset size limits.
Best Prioritize datasets for Premium which can take
Practice advantage of incremental data refresh.
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Power BI Report Server
On-Premises Deployment of Power BI
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On-Premises Delivery with Power BI Report Server
FYI
Goal is *not*
feature parity
with the Power
BI Service.
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Managing Location of Content
Best If both the Power BI Service and Power BI Report
Practice Server are utilized, users will have to visit two places
for content. This should be carefully managed.
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Managing Power BI Desktop
Best Power BI Desktop authors must use a version
Practice compatible with Power BI Report Server, which is
released approx. every 4 months. This ‘flavor’ of
Power BI Desktop is not auto-installed.
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Embedded Solutions
Set of REST APIs for delivering content embedded in a custom
application, SharePoint Online, Teams, or third party applications.
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Option 1: Organizational Embedding
Applicable to:
Power BI
handles user
authorization via
Premium
(depicted) or all
users having Pro
licenses
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Option 2: Power BI Embedded (Azure Service)
Applicable to:
Custom app
handles user
authorization
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Capacity-Based Licenses
Best Do a careful analysis of licensing needs for capacity.
Practice There are distinctions between P-series, EM-series,
and A-series SKUs. It can get very confusing.
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Other Content Delivery Options
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Power BI Mobile Apps
There are phone apps,
as well as the Mobile
App for Windows 10
which is optimized for
tablets.
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Subscriptions
Best for:
• Point-in-time
snapshot
• Interactivity not
needed
• User prefers report delivery on a schedule
Best Verify data security is not at risk by
Practice distributing PDFs via e-mail delivery.
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Publish to Web
Best for:
• Public data
• Embed code in a frame
Because of the security risks: disable the Publish to Web
Best
Practice
capability in the tenant settings. Enable selectively only.
This capability can be utilized by Free users.
Best
Practice Regularly verify the embed codes in the Admin Portal.
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Analyze in Excel
Best for:
• Reusing existing dataset
• Using familiar Excel
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Power BI Publisher for Excel
Best Retain original
Practice Excel files in a
location which
aligns with Power
BI content.
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Power BI Service Live Connection
Best for:
• Reusing existing
dataset
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Options for Handling Multiple
Dev, Test, and Prod Environments
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Handling Dev, Test, Production Environments
Option 1
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Handling Dev, Test, Production Environments
Option 2
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Handling Dev, Test, Production Environments
Option 3
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Copying Content Between Workspaces
A future V2 new workspace feature will be to copy
FYI content between workspaces. This will open up an
additional possibility for handling different
Dev/Test/Prod environments.
There is not yet an API to publish an App.
FYI Therefore, the workspace content management can
be automated, but the App publishing cannot yet
be fully automated.
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Parameterize Connection Strings
Best To simplify Dev/Test/Prod scenarios, use parameters
Practice in the Query Editor to store data source connection
information. (By default, connections are stored in
every individual query.)
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Wrap-Up
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Recap: Sharing, Collaboration, Distribution
Content My Workspace Sharing Premium
Personal Area Share Dedicated
& Read-Only Resources
Data App Workspace Individual
Dashboards, Collaboration Area Content
Reports, Small Team Distribution
Datasets
App
Broad Content Distribution
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Recap: Sharing, Collaboration, Distribution
Content My Workspace Sharing Premium
Personal BI Share Enterprise
& Read-Only Content
Data App Workspace Individual Distribution
Dashboards, Content
Team Collaboration
Reports,
Datasets
App
Large Team Distribution
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