Top Tips for Sharing Content Using Power BI

Level: Beginners

Power BI has evolved significantly since Matt’s original publication of this article in 2016. While the foundational concepts remain relevant, modern features and best practices offer more secure, scalable, and collaborative ways to share content. This updated guide reflects the latest capabilities and recommendations for sharing Power BI content effectively.

I was fortunate to be able to hang on to Matt’s coat tails, as he accelerated my best-practice learning of Power BI implementation, which saved me from having to discover the right way to do things as a result of repeated iterations of trial and error, and one such area was learning the right way to share reports.

It is not easy to categorise the different sharing approaches into logical buckets as there is quite a bit of overlap, but hopefully my explanation below will make it easier to understand the options available to you, and which you should choose, when.

PBIX Workbooks

The most basic way to share your Power BI content is to simply share your PBIX workbook (created by Power BI Desktop) using traditional methods.  There are a few reasons why you might want to do this.

Reasons you might want to do it

Things that might turn you off.

Everyone can download the software and use it for free (Windows users – sorry Mac boys and girls) It has lots of visualisations you just can’t get in Excel You don’t need your IT department to sign you up to the Power BI Service to get started (although you do need local Admin Rights to install) It is no harder to share a PBIX workbook than a XLSX workbook.

Workbooks can get very large – hundreds of Mb so they can be hard to share if they are that big, unless of course you can share via SharePoint. There are no Dashboard capabilities until you publish to Power BI Service. Data needs to be manually updated, but can be automated in the Service. You can’t stop sharing – once you send the workbook, the other party has it and there’s no way you can stop them making changes (not so with the Service).

So while you can do it this way, sharing via the Power BI Service is probably a better way to go.  The Power BI Service (or Fabric Service) was built for the explicit purpose of sharing, so why not use it.

Licensing Requirements for Sharing

Before we get into the specifics of where to store content in the Power BI Service, it is important to note that to share Power BI content, you must be working with a licensed version of Power BI.  The standard licensing solution for most organisations is the Power BI Pro license, which requires both the publisher (you the content developer) and the recipient to have a Power BI Pro license or higher.  Users with free licenses can use the Power BI service to connect to data and create reports and dashboards for their own use (in My Workspace).  They can’t use the Power BI sharing or collaborating features with others, or publish content to other people’s workspaces.  However, if the content is published to a workspace backed by a Microsoft Fabric F64 (or higher) capacity, only the publisher needs a Pro license, recipients can view the content without requiring a Pro license themselves. This makes capacity-backed workspaces a scalable option for enterprise-wide sharing.

Power BI Features That Require a License Summary

Power BI Pro License

Required for:

• Sharing reports and dashboards, including via PowerPoint
• Collaborating in Workspaces
• Publishing to Workspace Apps
• Subscribing to report updates
• Commenting and co-authoring
• Exporting to PowerPoint (Live)
• Using Analyze in Excel

Both the publisher and recipient must have a Pro license unless the content is hosted in a Microsoft Fabric F64 (or higher) capacity.

Power BI Premium Per User (PPU)

Includes all Pro features plus:

• Paginated reports
• AI visuals
• Dataflows and enhanced refresh rates
• Deployment pipelines

Fabric F64+ Capacity

If content is published to a workspace backed by Fabric F64 or higher, only the publisher needs a Pro or PPU license. Recipients with free licenses can view and interact with the content.  These workspaces can be identified by a Diamond icon next to their name.

Free License

Limited to:

• Creating and viewing personal reports
• No sharing, collaboration, or publishing capabilities

Understanding Workspaces

Now that we understand that sharing Power BI content via the Power BI Service requires a license, the next step is to decide where to publish our Power BI report.  Ultimately there are two different types of workspace available for publishing Power BI content.  There is My Workspace, and Workspaces.

My Workspace

Once you sign up to the Power BI Service, the default location where you will be able to publish your workbooks is the My Workspace area.

Every Power BI user who has access to the Power BI Service has a My Workspace assigned to them.  This workspace serves as a personal sandbox environment. Although it is possible to share content from My Workspace, this sandbox is not intended for distribution of production reports (more on that later).

Features of My Workspace

• Personal Development Area: It’s designed for users to create, test, and explore report and dashboard capabilities privately.
• Storage for Personal Content: You can store content that is not yet ready for broader sharing, or is relevant to you personally but does not have wider scope.
• Quick Prototyping: Ideal for experimenting with semantic models or visualisations before moving them to a shared workspace.
• Not Recommended for Production Sharing: Content in My Workspace is only visible to the owner, making it unsuitable for team collaboration or enterprise deployment.
• Limited Access Control: You can’t assign roles or permissions to others within My Workspace.
• No App Publishing: You cannot publish Power BI Apps (Workspace Apps) from My Workspace.

For sharing content with others, especially in a professional or enterprise setting, it is recommended that you use dedicated Workspaces with role-based access control and publish content for distribution via Power BI Apps. This ensures better governance, scalability, and collaboration.  That being said, the next couple of paragraphs will discuss sharing options from My Workspace.

Sharing from My Workspace (use caution)

There are 3 main ways you can share from My Workspace.  These methods of sharing are also available in other areas of Power BI (covered further down the page).  While you “can” share this way from My Workspace, be sure to read up on the downsides of sharing this way and consider the other options further down the page.

Here are the 3 options to share from My Workspace.

Direct Share Content from My Workspace

Hovering your mouse over an item in the workspace, will reveal the sharing link.  Clicking on the sharing icon brings up the sharing menu.  From here, you can share to individual email addresses or to Active Directory Groups.  It is possible to securely share content this way with people internal to your organisation (email domain) as well as with people outside of your organisation (when appropriate settings are configured).

Publish to Web from My Workspace

When viewing a Report or Dashboard in My Workspace, it is possible to make the material publicly visible over the web.  You can get an embedding code to publish the material via a web page or you can get a link that you can send to anyone. But be careful!  Even if you send the link to a single person, once Published to the Web, the material is available to anyone that has the link (or can find it, hack it etc) – no password required.

Note: because of the potential security risk associated with this means of sharing, many organisations disable this feature.

 

Export Content to an External Tool from My Workspace

It is also possible to share content outside of the Power BI Service by exporting to tools like Power Point or Excel.  When exporting Power BI content as static imagery, there is no need for a license, as the exported content is just a snapshot in time, and doesn’t leverage Power BI’s dynamic data exploration capabilities.  Power BI content can be exported as PNG image snapshots, PDFs for printable sharing, or as static slides in a Power Point presentation.  While all of these options are possible, it is the embedded capabilities where Power BI integration really shines.

Fully interactive Power BI reports can be shared via the following platforms:

• Microsoft Teams – By embedding into a Teams Channel or by enabling the Power BI Teams App.
  
  Power BI now supports direct sharing to Microsoft Teams, enabling seamless collaboration within your organization. Users can comment on reports and dashboards to provide feedback or ask questions. Subscriptions allow users to receive updated reports automatically via email, ensuring timely access to insights.
• SharePoint Online – For internal portals and dashboards
  Sharing a Power BI report to SharePoint Online is a powerful way to make insights accessible and actionable across your organization.  SharePoint pages provide end users with centralised access to interactive reports alongside related documents, workflows, and announcements.  SharePoint is often used as a team or project hub.  Embedding Power BI reports there keeps data-driven decisions close to where collaboration happens.  If the report is hosted in a Fabric F64+ workspace, viewers don’t need a Power BI Pro license, only the publisher does.
• Microsoft Excel – Via the Analyze in Excel feature
  
  Analyze in Excel is a feature in Power BI that allows you to explore and interact with your Power BI datasets directly within Microsoft Excel using PivotTables, slicers, and Excel formulas.  It is the most secure way to distribute data in Excel, as the data remains secured behind Power BI Service authentication, preventing accidental data leakage.
• Custom Web Applications – Using Power BI Embedded for tailored experiences
• Third-party platforms like Salesforce – Through Power BI Embedded integration

There are some downsides of sharing from My Workspace

Here are the pros and cons of sharing this way from My Workspace.  Remember it is possible to share using these methods from a collaborative Workspace as well, more on that below.

Pros

Cons

It is easy to share very large workbooks with other users as long as they have an account too. You can share with Mac users (via browser) You can share with Mobile users (there are apps and browser solutions) You can stop sharing the content at any time by going back into the share options in the service and removing the sharing approval.

It is difficult to easily spot the dashboards you have shared from the My Workspace view. My Workspace can get very crowded with ad hoc reports and dashboards for your personal use, and these can then get in the way of shared material. If you have a role to share material within an organisation (eg Business Analyst sharing material), then what will happen when you go on leave?  No one else can access your workspace. There are better ways of doing it by using collaborative Workspaces.

Workspaces

If you are serious about sharing material, then you really should start using the collaborative platform, Workspaces. Workspaces are a Pro Licence feature, but so are most of the sharing activities mentioned above even when they are hosted in My Workspace.  If your organisation is serious about using Power BI to share content and enhance business analytics capabilities, then you need to be supported with the appropriate license commitment.

The benefits of using Workspaces vs My Workspace include:

• Securely control access of content via Role Based Access in the Workspace, and further refine using Audiences in Workspace Apps.
• More than one person can publish, edit and manage all content within a Workspace.
• One or more people can administer user access to the Workspace.
• If the original author is not available (ie they are on holidays or they leave the company) then someone else can take ownership of the material without starting again from scratch.
• You can have as many Workspaces as you need, and these can be based on any group categorisation that works for you and your organisation.
• When you have your shared material in a Workspace, there is no confusion as to what is your personal material and what material you have loaded for the purpose of sharing (see below how you can categorise the Workspaces).

Sharing Workspaces

Aside from sharing individual Power BI items, another option for sharing Power BI content is to share the Workspace itself.  You can of course share the Workspace for the purpose of “administration”, but you can also share with the purpose of Group Collaboration and/or Content Sharing.  Sharing a Workspace gives your collaborators access to all items within the workspace.  When sharing at the Workspace level, you have the ability to set access for individuals to be either an Administrator, Member, Contributor, or Viewer.

• Admins always have full privileges, including the ability to alter the Workspace settings (i.e. workspace name, license, etc).
• Members have full privilege over the contents of the workspace, and the ability to update the Workspace App.
• Contributors have full privilege over the contents of the workspace, but do not have the ability to update the Workspace App.
• Viewers have read-only access over the contents of the workspace, but can see all content within a workspace
• Note: Power BI App Viewers can only see the content their Audience allows them to see.

Workspace Admins are assigned by the Fabric Administrators, and are responsible for managing the workspaces within their purview.  The Workspace Role Based Access can be configured by the Workspace Admin depending on the group requirements.

Workspace Apps

Once you have decided to publish your content into a Workspace, you have the same sharing options as covered earlier with all the same benefits, but you also have the new ability to create a Power BI App, officially known as Workspace App.

A Workspace App in Power BI is a packaged version of the visual content within a workspace, such as reports, dashboards, and scorecards (the yellow items within the workspace).  Note that Semantic Models (purple icon) although used to populate the visuals within the reports, do not directly become part of a Workspace App.  The Workspace App is designed with the end user in mind.  It provides a significantly more user friendly experience than navigating multiple different reports within a workspace.  Instead, a single App link is shared with the end user, and through the use of Audiences (1), in conjunction with Row Level Security, different content (2) can be distributed to various individuals in the organisation. 

Features of a Workspace App

• It’s a read-only experience for end users that bundles selected content from a workspace.
• You can customize navigation, control access, and update content without disrupting users.
• Apps are published from Power BI workspaces and can be distributed to individuals, groups, or entire organizations.

Why Use a Workspace App

 

Conclusion

Sharing content in Power BI has become more robust and user-friendly with the introduction of new features and integrations. By following these updated best practices, organizations can ensure secure, efficient, and impactful data sharing across teams.

Hopefully this article has helped you gain a deeper understanding of the sharing options available with Power BI.