How to Create a Premium Workspace in Power BI

Creating a Power BI Premium workspace is the first step toward unlocking enterprise-grade features for your data analytics. It moves you from the shared, multi-tenant environment of Power BI Pro into your own dedicated set of resources. This article will walk you through how to create a Premium workspace and explain the powerful benefits that come with it.

First, What Is a Power BI Premium Workspace?

In simple terms, a standard Power BI workspace runs on shared capacity. This means your reports and datasets share computing resources with other Microsoft customers. It's efficient and cost-effective for many use cases, but performance can sometimes be impacted by other "noisy neighbors" on the server.

A Premium workspace, on the other hand, runs on dedicated capacity. Your organization purchases a capacity node (a set of dedicated resources reserved just for you), and an administrator assigns workspaces to it. Think of it like moving from a shared apartment building into your own private house. You get more space, better performance, and access to exclusive amenities that aren't available to everyone else. Moving a workspace to Premium unlocks a suite of features designed for large-scale data handling, better governance, and wider report distribution.

Prerequisites Before You Begin

Before you jump in, you’ll need a couple of things in place. The process is straightforward, but it requires the right permissions and subscriptions.

• Power BI Premium Capacity: Your organization must have a Power BI Premium subscription (either P SKUs for enterprise or EM SKUs for embedding). Without this, you won’t have any dedicated capacity to assign a workspace to.
• Admin Privileges: You need to be a Capacity Admin or have workspace creation permissions assigned by a Power BI Admin to create a workspace and assign it to a capacity. If you aren't an admin, you may need to ask one to either create the workspace for you or assign an existing one to the Premium capacity.
• A Power BI Pro License: Content creators, developers, and administrators who publish content to Premium workspaces still need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. Free users can consume content in a Premium workspace, but they cannot publish it.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Premium Workspace

Once you have the prerequisites sorted, creating the workspace only takes a few clicks. You can either create a brand new workspace or upgrade an existing one to Premium.

Method 1: Creating a New Premium Workspace

This is the path to take if you are starting from scratch.

1. Navigate to Workspaces: Log into your Power BI service (app.powerbi.com). On the left-hand navigation pane, click on Workspaces.
2. Create a New Workspace: In the Workspaces pane, click the Create a workspace button at the bottom.
3. Enter Workspace Details: A panel will appear on the right side. Give your workspace a clear, descriptive Name. An effective naming convention can be helpful here, such as Dept - Project Name - Prod (e.g., Sales - Q3 Reporting - Prod). You can also add an optional description.
4. Open the Advanced Settings: Click on the Advanced tab to reveal more configuration options. This is where the magic happens.
5. Assign to Premium Capacity: You'll see several options here. The key one is License mode. The default is Pro. Select Premium per capacity.
6. Select a Capacity: After you select Premium, a new dropdown menu labeled Capacity will appear. Select the dedicated capacity your administrator has set up for your organization (e.g., PremiumCapacityP1).
7. Save Your Workspace: Once you've selected your capacity, you can configure other settings if needed. Finally, click Save. That's it! Your new Premium workspace is now ready to use.

Method 2: Upgrading an Existing Workspace to Premium

If you already have a workspace with reports and datasets, you can easily upgrade it without recreating everything.

1. Navigate to the Workspace Settings: Go to the existing workspace you want to upgrade. Click the three dots (More options) next to the workspace name and select Workspace settings.
2. Go to the Premium Tab: In the settings pane, click on the Premium tab.
3. Switch on Dedicated Capacity: Toggle the Premium capacity option to "On".
4. Choose the Capacity: Select the correct capacity from the dropdown menu, just as you would when creating a new workspace.
5. Hit Save: Click the Save button, and your existing workspace will now be running on a dedicated premium capacity with all its features unlocked.

The Key Benefits: Why is a Premium Workspace Worth It?

Creating the workspace is easy, but the real benefit comes from the powerful features it unlocks. Here are the main advantages that make Premium a game-changer for serious analytics teams.

1. Dedicated Performance and Capacity

This is the foundational benefit. With your own dedicated hardware, your report loading, DAX query processing, and data refreshes are more consistent and faster. You are no longer competing for resources, which is essential for business-critical reports that need to be available and performant at all times, especially during peak business hours.

2. Support for Much Larger Datasets

Standard workspaces in Power BI Pro are limited to 1 GB per dataset. Premium capacities smash this limit, allowing for datasets up to 400 GB (depending on the SKU). This enables you to build incredibly rich, complex data models analyzing millions or even billions of rows without having to compromise or over-simplify your data.

3. Paginated Reports

While Power BI excels at interactive dashboards, some stakeholders still need traditional, static reports designed for printing or exporting as PDFs. Paginated reports are the answer. Built with Power BI Report Builder, they allow you to create pixel-perfect, printer-friendly operational reports, invoices, and detailed tables. This feature is exclusive to Premium workspaces.

4. Deployment Pipelines

For any team managing critical reports, doing development work in the live production workspace is risky. Deployment Pipelines bring application lifecycle management (ALM) to Power BI. You can set up Development, Test, and Production environments to safely develop, test, and deploy content. This structured process reduces errors and ensures that a buggy update doesn't take down a CEO's favorite dashboard.

5. Increased Refresh Rates

Need more up-to-date data? Pro workspaces are limited to 8 scheduled refreshes per day. Premium workspaces allow for up to 48 scheduled refreshes a day, so your data can be updated almost every half hour. You also gain access to the XMLA endpoint, which allows you to programmatically trigger refreshes and orchestrate more complex data-loading scenarios.

6. Advanced AI and Dataflows Features

Power BI Premium gives you access to more advanced AI features. This includes services like AutoML (Automated Machine Learning) and integration with Azure Cognitive Services for text analytics and image recognition directly within your data prep workflows. You also get enhanced Dataflows capabilities, enabling more powerful, reusable data transformation logic.

7. Free User Distribution

One of the biggest practical benefits is licensing. With a Premium workspace, you can share reports with anyone in your organization, and they can view and interact with them using a FREE Power BI license. They don't need a Pro license just for viewing. This makes it incredibly cost-effective to distribute insights across your entire organization without licensing every single person.

Managing Roles and Access in Your Workspace

Once your workspace is created, managing who can do what is essential. Power BI uses a simple role-based system:

• Admin: Can do everything, including managing permissions, adding and deleting users, and deleting the workspace itself.
• Member: Can publish and edit content, create reports, share items, and add other members (but not admins).
• Contributor: Can publish and edit content but cannot share reports or manage permissions. This is a common role for developers.
• Viewer: Can only view and interact with existing content. They cannot make any changes. Good for end-users and consumers of reports.

To assign roles, go to your workspace, click the Access button in the top-right corner, and add users with their desired role. Thoughtful role assignment is key to a well-governed Power BI environment.

Final Thoughts

Creating a Power BI Premium workspace is your gateway to leveraging data at scale. It offers the performance, governance, and advanced analysis tools necessary for enterprise-level reporting, moving your analytics from individual tasks to a core, managed business function.

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