How to Share Power BI

You’ve done the hard work of connecting your data, creating measures, and designing a Power BI report that perfectly visualizes your business performance. Now comes the most important part: getting that report into the hands of the people who need it. This article walks you through the different ways to share your Power BI dashboards and reports, so you can move from data analysis to data-driven action.

Why Does Sharing Even Matter?

A report that no one sees is just a collection of charts taking up space on a server. The real value of business intelligence comes from collaboration. When you share a report, you’re not just sending a file, you’re empowering your team, department leaders, or clients to:

• Make informed decisions based on live, accurate data.

• Track KPIs and progress toward shared goals.

• Ask new questions and drill down into the data to find their own answers.

• Create a single source of truth, eliminating confusion from multiple conflicting spreadsheets.

Sharing turns your personal analysis into a valuable organizational asset.

Before You Share: Understanding Power BI Licenses

Before we jump into the "how," it's important to understand the one big requirement for sharing in Power BI: licensing. This is a common point of confusion, so let's clear it up.

In general, to share a report and for someone to view that shared report, both you and the recipient need a Power BI Pro license. If your organization uses Power BI Premium (either per user or per capacity), the rules are more flexible, but the Pro license is the standard for most collaboration.

If the person you're sharing with has only a free license, they generally won't be able to open the report you send them (with a few exceptions we'll cover later). Think of the Pro license as your ticket to collaborate within the Power BI ecosystem.

Method 1: Direct Sharing for Reports and Dashboards

This is the quickest and most straightforward way to share a single report or dashboard with a few specific people inside your organization. It works just like sharing a file in Google Drive or OneDrive.

How to Do It:

1. Open the report or dashboard you want to share in the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com).

2. Look for the Share button in the top menu.

3. In the "Send link" dialog box, enter the names or email addresses of your colleagues.

4. • Choose the permissions you want to grant them. You'll typically see three options:

     • Allow recipients to share this report/dashboard: This lets them forward the report to others. Be cautious with sensitive data.

     • Allow recipients to build new content using the underlying datasets: This is a powerful option that gives them permission to connect to your data model and create their own reports from it.

     • Send an email notification to recipient(s): This is checked by default and sends them an email with a direct link.

5. Click Send. Your colleagues will receive an email letting them know you've shared a report with them.

Best for: Quickly sending a report to one or two team members for feedback or review.

Method 2: Using Workspaces for Team Collaboration

If you're working on a project with a team, sharing individual reports one by one can get messy. This is where Workspaces shine. A Workspace is a shared collaborative environment where you and your team can work together on a collection of dashboards, reports, workbooks, and datasets.

Instead of sharing each item individually, you just add your team members to the Workspace, and they get access to everything inside it.

Workspace Roles and Permissions

When you add someone to a Workspace, you assign them a role, which determines what they can do:

• Admin: Has full control, including managing other users, updating the workspace, and deleting it.

• Member: Can add other users (but not admins), publish content, and manage app permissions. Almost full control.

• Contributor: Can publish and update reports but cannot manage users or change settings. Ideal for team members who contribute content.

• Viewer: Can only view reports and interact with them (filter, drill down, etc.). They cannot change or share anything. Perfect for stakeholders who just need to see the final product.

How to Add Users to a Workspace:

1. In your Workspace, click the Access button in the top-right corner.

2. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to add.

3. Select the appropriate role (Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer) from the dropdown.

4. Click Add.

Best for: Ongoing projects, departmental reporting, and centralizing all related data content for a specific team.

Method 3: 'Publish to web' for public audiences

What if you want to share a report with a wide, public audience that doesn't have a Power BI account? For example, embedding a map with public data on your company’s blog post. For this, Power BI has a feature called "Publish to web."

This generates a public link and an embed code that anyone on the internet can use to view your report. They do not need a Power BI license to see it.

WARNING: This is a powerful feature with major security implications. When you use 'Publish to web,' your report and its underlying data become public. DO NOT use this feature for any private, confidential, or proprietary company data. Assume that anyone on the internet can and will see it.

How to Publish to Web:

1. Open the report in Power BI service.

2. Go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).

3. A confirmation window will appear, emphasizing the security risks. Read it carefully and click Create embed code if you understand and accept the risk.

4. Click Publish.

5. A new dialog box will appear with a public link you can share directly and an HTML iframe code that you can paste into your website or blog.

Best for: Sharing non-sensitive data with the public, such as embedding visualizations in-store locators, public program results, or journalistic data stories.

Method 4: Distributing Content with Power BI Apps

As your reporting grows, you may want to package a collection of related reports and dashboards together into a polished, professional package for broad distribution within your company. That’s exactly what a Power BI App is for.

An App bundles content from a Workspace into a read-only experience for your consumers. It’s easier for them to navigate than a Workspace and gives you a formal way to release official company reports.

Steps to Create and Publish an App:

1. Finalize all the reports and dashboards in your Workspace.

2. In the Workspace, click the Create app button in the upper-right corner.

3. Setup: Give your App a name, description, and upload a logo for branding.

4. Content: Choose which reports and dashboards from the Workspace you want to include in the App. You can also reorder them.

5. Audience: Control who can access the App. You can share it with your entire organization or specify certain people or groups.

6. Click Publish app. Users can now find and install your App from the “Apps” section in their Power BI service.

Best for: Broadly distributing a standardized set of reports to a department or the entire company.

Method 5: Sharing with External Users (Outside Your Organization)

Sharing with clients, partners, or vendors is a common need. The good news is that it’s quite simple. You can use the direct sharing method (Method 1) and just enter the external user's email address.

Here’s how it works behind the scenes:

• When you share with an external user, Power BI invites them to access your organization's content as a "guest" user through Azure Active Directory B2B (Business-to-Business) collaboration.

• The user will receive an email with a link. When they click it, they'll be asked to sign in or create an account to access the report.

• Licensing: Just like with internal users, the external guest user needs a Power BI Pro license to view the content. They can either bring their own Pro license from their company or you can assign one to them. (The only exception is if your Workspace is on a Power BI Premium capacity).

The experience is largely seamless, but it all comes down to licensing. Make sure your external user has the correct license before sharing to avoid any access issues.

A Quick Comparison of Sharing Methods

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the choices? Here’s a simple table to help you decide which method is right for you.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right way to share your Power BI content is just as important as building the report itself. By understanding the differences between direct sharing, workspaces, apps, and public publishing, you can ensure your data reaches the right audience in a secure and effective way, empowering your entire organization to make smarter decisions.

We know that managing licenses, workspaces, and sharing permissions in traditional BI tools can create an extra layer of complexity. We built Graphed to remove that friction. It lets you connect all your marketing and sales data sources with a single click and create real-time, shareable dashboards just by describing what you want to see. This allows you to securely share insights with your team in seconds, without a steep learning curve or needing to become a permissions expert.