How to Give Access to Power BI Report

You’ve done the hard work of building a fantastic Power BI report, but it’s not creating any value until the right people can see it. Getting your insights into the hands of your team or stakeholders is the final and most crucial step. This guide breaks down the different ways to share your Power BI reports, from a quick one-on-one share to broader distribution across your company.

Why Sharing Your Report Matters

A report that only you can see is just a collection of charts. When you share it, you're transforming that data into a tool for collaboration and decision-making. Sharing allows your team to track KPIs in real-time, opens up conversations about performance, and ensures everyone is operating from the same source of truth. Whether you're a marketer showing campaign ROI or a sales manager tracking pipeline velocity, sharing is what turns your analysis into action.

Before You Share: A Quick Checklist

Before hitting the "share" button, running through a quick pre-flight check can save you from a lot of "I can't access this" emails. Take a minute to review these key points.

Check Required Licenses

First, it's important to understand Power BI's licensing. To share a report, both you (the sender) and the person you're sharing with (the recipient) typically need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. If you're sharing a report that's stored in a Premium capacity workspace, recipients can view it with just a free license, but this is a more advanced setup common in larger organizations. The most frequent sharing scenario requires both users to have a Pro license.

Verify Workspace and Dataset Permissions

To access a report, users need two things: access to the report itself and underlying permissions for the dataset it's built on. When you share a report, Power BI is usually smart enough to grant them read permissions on the dataset automatically. However, if your report uses row-level security (RLS) - which restricts data access for certain users (e.g., sales reps can only see their own deals) - you need to ensure those roles and rules are set up correctly before you share.

Also, it’s best practice to publish reports you intend to share into a shared workspace, not your personal "My Workspace." "My Workspace" is your private sandbox, while workspaces are designed for collaboration with your team.

Method 1: Direct Sharing from Power BI Service

Direct sharing is the quickest and most common way to give report access to specific individuals or a small group. Think of it as sending a direct link that only works for the people you specify.

When to Use This Method

This is perfect for ad-hoc sharing, such as sending a report preview to your manager for feedback, sharing campaign results with a few key marketing stakeholders, or collaborating on a report with a colleague.

Step-by-Step Guide to Direct Sharing

1. Navigate to the report you want to share in the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com).
2. Click the Share button in the top action bar. You'll see a pop-up dialog.
3. In the "Send link" dialog box, you can enter the names or email addresses of the people you want to share the report with directly.
4. Now, look at your sharing options. You can decide what the recipients are allowed to do:
5. You can add an optional message to give your colleagues context, like "Here's the Q3 sales performance report we discussed."
6. Click Send. Your recipients will get an email with a direct link to the report.

Method 2: Publish Your Report as a Power BI App

When you need to distribute an official collection of reports and dashboards to a broader audience, publishing a Power BI App is the way to go. An App bundles related content together into a polished, professional package, making it easy for users to find what they need without getting lost in workspaces.

When to Use This Method

This method is ideal for distributing finalized reports to an entire department, a project team, or even the whole company. It provides a much cleaner, more formal user experience and gives you better control over who sees what.

Step-by-Step Guide to Publishing an App

1. Finalize all the reports and dashboards you want to include within a single workspace.
2. In the workspace, click the Create app button in the top-right corner.
3. On the Setup tab, give your app a descriptive name (e.g., "Marketing Team KPIs"), add a description so users know what's inside, and you can even upload a logo for branding.
4. Move to the Content tab. Here you will see a list of all content in the workspace. Select the specific reports you want to make visible in the app.
5. Next is the powerful Audience tab. This is where you grant access. You can publish the app to your entire organization or specify certain user groups (like M365 groups or security groups). You can even create multiple audience groups within the same app, allowing you to show or hide certain reports for different sets of users.
6. Once you've configured your audiences, click Publish app. You can then copy the app link and share it with your users, or they can find it themselves by going to the "Apps" section in their Power BI service window.

The beauty of an App is that you can update reports in your workspace, and then just click "Update app." The changes are then pushed out to all users without you needing to resend any links.

Method 3: Embedding Reports Where People Already Work

Sometimes the best way to share a report is to bring it directly into the tools your team uses every day. Embedding allows you to display a live, interactive Power BI report in other applications like SharePoint, Teams, or even a public website.

Embedding in SharePoint Online

If your organization uses SharePoint, embedding a report is easy. It keeps your data insights right next to your team's documents and other project information.

1. In Power BI, open the report and go to File > Embed report > SharePoint Online.
2. Copy the embed URL that Power BI provides.
3. In SharePoint, edit the page where you want to add the report, add a new web part, and select "Power BI."
4. Paste the URL you copied from Power BI into the web part's properties field. That's it! Your interactive report will now appear on your SharePoint page.

Publish to Web (Public)

Important Warning: This method makes your report visible to anyone on the internet. Do not use this for confidential or proprietary data. It's meant for sharing public information, such as embedding a data visualization in a blog post for the world to see.

1. In your report, go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
2. Power BI will show a prominent warning about public sharing. After confirming you understand, you'll receive a public link and an HTML snippet you can use to embed the report online.

Method 4: Exporting Static Copies

When you just need a snapshot in time or the recipient doesn’t have a Power BI account, exporting your report is a great option. It gives you a non-interactive copy you can easily attach to an email or include in a presentation.

When to Use This Method

This is useful for weekly email updates, board presentations, or creating an archive of a report's state at a particular time.

How to Export Your Report

From the report view, click the Export menu. You'll see several options:

• PDF: This creates a high-quality, printable PDF of your report pages. It's a "what you see is what you get" static image.
• PowerPoint: This option exports each report page as a high-resolution image and places it on its own slide in a PowerPoint presentation. It also includes a link back to the live report for presenting.
• Analyze in Excel: This is a powerful option for users who want to dive deeper. It connects an Excel pivot table to your Power BI dataset, letting them explore a summarized version of your data directly. The user will need "Build" permission on your dataset for this to work.

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to share your Power BI reports is just as important as building them. Whether you're sending a quick link to a coworker, publishing a formal app for your department, or exporting a PDF for a presentation, choosing the right method ensures your insights reach the right audience in the right context.

Frankly, managing permissions and pushing past data silos in legacy BI tools can often feel like a job in itself. For marketing and sales teams who just want to connect their data and see what’s working, this complexity can be a major bottleneck. We built Graphed to solve this very problem. We provide an easier way to connect your data sources - like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce - and generate live dashboards by simply describing what you want to see. This lets you and your team get self-serve access to real-time reports without navigating complex access controls or waiting for a data expert.