Power BI – what does it offer?
Power BI allows you to combine data from multiple sources – databases, files and web services, segregate and analyze them. Creating visually appealing and interactive reports is fast and intuitive, and their scope can be freely modified and shared with other users. What is essential, various types of changes are made in real-time. This saves much time compared to manual work and effectively eliminates the risk of mistakes.
Power BI for business users
Business users can use the Microsoft Power BI service to explore reports and dashboards so that they can make data-driven business decisions. However, if you’ve been using the Power BI service for a while or are planning to implement it, you’ve probably discovered that some features only work if you have a specific type of license, subscription, or permission.
What you can do in a Power BI service depends on three things:
- the type of license and subscription you use,
- where the data is stored,
- the assigned roles and permissions.
Power BI licenses
Each user of the Power BI service may have a free license, a Pro license, or a Premium license per user. If you are a Power BI business user, you are most likely using a free license managed by a Power BI administrator.
Power BI Premium – Capacity
The Premium option in Power BI is an organizational subscription that provides a different way to store content – in a virtual container called a capacity. With Premium capacity, anyone with the appropriate permissions, whether they are part of your organization or not, can view stored content in Power BI Premium without purchasing individual Power BI Pro or Premium user licenses.
A person who creates content in Premium service capacity uses a Pro service license to connect to data sources, model them, and create reports and dashboards. A user without a Pro license, on the other hand, can access a workspace in the Power BI Premium capacity as long as they have an assigned role in that workspace. Within these workspaces, designers assign roles such as:
- viewer,
- co-author,
- member,
- administrator.
These roles define the extent to which collaborators can use the content.
Power BI business users
How you interact with the Power BI service depends on your job role. For example, a business user receives content from colleagues in dashboards, reports, and applications. They work in the online or mobile version of the Power BI solution, viewing the reports and analytics they receive to help make critical business decisions.
In practice, what this means is that the business user does not generally have access to all the functionality of Microsoft Power BI. Because they are working with shared content, they need one of the following:
- a Power BI Pro or Premium license per user (PPU),
- a subscription to Power BI Premium for Business, with the option to share content from Premium capacity.
If you are having trouble choosing the proper Power BI license, please get in touch with us. We will help you select the optimal solution for your business to make data analysis simple and effective.
