Reporting and analytics are only useful if you can share them with the people that need to know and can take action on the results. Let’s take a look at a few ways that you can share data with Power BI.

Sharing report file from Power BI Desktop

This is the only option that does not require a Power BI pro license. Once you have created a report within the Power BI Desktop the report can be saved as a PBIX file. This file can be sent to others or saved in a shared drive for access. Because this exists within the Power BI Desktop the visuals cannot be placed within a dashboard and cannot be automatically refreshed. Data can be manually refreshed or the report can be created using direct query as the method for connecting to the data.

Sharing individual reports/dashboards in Power BI Online

Reports can be shared both within and outside your organization with Power BI online. All users that need to view the report will require a Power BI Pro license or the report must be created with Power BI Premium capacity. Reports can be shared individually with one or more people or they can be published to a workspace. Workspaces are helpful to create when you have a group of people that will need access to more than one report as this eliminates the need to go through the sharing process with each report for multiple people.

Sharing via Teams

Microsoft Teams has a Power BI tab that can be added to your app and once this is activated and users are signed in reports can be shared. Users are required to have a Power BI Pro license or the report must be created with the Power BI Premium capacity to be shared via Teams. Teams is helpful to use if you are already using it as a communication tool as users can view reports within a system they are already accessing on a daily basis and collaboration can be even easier.

Sharing via SharePoint

Reports can also be embedded into SharePoint online. In order to publish to SharePoint a report must first be published to Power BI online and all users that need to view the report will require a Power BI Pro license. If your team uses SharePoint on a daily basis this can be a great option to avoid having to navigate to Power BI online to view reports.

These are a few ways to share data with Power BI and are the main ways I use with customers. There are quite a few others, such as exporting to excel or PowerPoint and even publishing to the web. (Caution: Publishing to the web can be a security risk as data published to the web can be viewed by anyone on the internet.)

Getting data into the right hands as efficiently as possible is a huge asset for any company and with many options available Power BI is an excellent tool to help with this. Contact us if you have any questions on Power BI.

-Jerica Coleman, CRM and Power BI Consultant