How to Share Power BI with External Users

Sharing your Power BI reports with people outside your organization shouldn't be a complicated puzzle. Whether you need to deliver insights to a client, collaborate with a partner, or provide data to a consultant, getting the right information to the right people is the goal. This guide walks you through the different ways you can share your Power BI content with external users, covering the pros, cons, and licensing requirements for each method.

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Before You Share: A Few Key Considerations

Before you hit the "Share" button, it’s important to understand a few core concepts that govern how Power BI handles external collaboration. Getting these right from the start will save you a lot of headaches later on.

Understanding Licensing: Pro vs. Premium

Licensing is the most common hurdle when sharing externally. In a nutshell, to share content or view shared content (that isn't in a Premium capacity), both the person sharing and the person viewing need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license assigned to their account.

• Power BI Pro: The standard per-user license. If you have a Pro license, you can share your reports with other Pro users, including external guests.
• Premium Per User (PPU): A license that includes all Pro features plus some Premium capabilities. Like Pro, you must have a PPU license to share with another PPU user.
• Premium Capacity: This is a game-changer for external sharing. When your reports are hosted in a workspace with Premium capacity, external users are not required to have a Pro or PPU license to view them. They can be “free” users. This is the go-to solution for sharing reports with a large number of external viewers.

Data Security and Governance

When you share data externally, security is paramount. You need to make sure external users only see the data they are authorized to see. This is often handled using Row-Level Security (RLS).

RLS allows you to define rules that restrict data access for certain users. For example, you could create a single sales report and share it with multiple clients, but configure RLS so that each client can only see their own sales data within that report. Always confirm your security rules work as expected before inviting external users.

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Managing Guest Users in Azure Active Directory (AD)

To share with external users, they must be added as "Guest" users in your organization's Azure Active Directory (sometimes called Microsoft Entra ID). This doesn't mean you need to be an Azure expert, but someone on your IT or admin team usually handles this process. They will invite the external user's email address, and once the user accepts the invitation, they will exist in your directory and you can share Power BI content with them as if they were an internal user.

Method 1: Direct Sharing from a Workspace

The simplest way to share a single report or dashboard is through direct sharing. This method is great for quick, one-off sharing with a small number of people.

How it Works:

1. Navigate to the report or dashboard you want to share inside your Power BI workspace.
2. Click the Share button at the top of the page.
3. Enter the full email address of the external user (who must already be a guest user in your Azure AD).
4. Select the permissions you want to grant them. Typically, you'll uncheck "Allow recipients to share this report" and "Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report" for external users.
5. Optionally, write a message and then click Grant access.

The external user will receive an email with a link to the report. When they click it, they will be prompted to sign in to view the content.

Pros:

• Very quick and easy for sharing a single piece of content.
• Granular control over who can access a specific report.

Cons:

• Requires both you and the external user to have a Power BI Pro or PPU license (unless the report is in a Premium capacity).
• Can become difficult to manage if you are sharing many reports with many different users.

Method 2: Sharing a Power BI App

A Power BI App bundles related dashboards, reports, and datasets into one package. Instead of sharing a dozen individual links, you can share a single app with a professional, branded navigation experience. This is the recommended method for distributing a collection of content.

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How it Works:

1. Finalize all the reports and dashboards you want to share within a single workspace.
2. In the workspace, click the Create app button.
3. In the Setup tab, give the app a name, description, and logo.
4. In the Navigation tab, organize the reports and dashboards you want to include in the app. You can create sections and reorder items to build a logical flow for the user.
5. In the Permissions tab, you can specify individual guest users or, better yet, security groups that contain your external users. Decide if you want to allow all users in your org to install it or limit it to specific people/groups. You will then enter the guest users' email addresses here.
6. Click Publish app.

Once published, you can share the link to the app with your external users. They will access a polished, read-only version of your reports without seeing the underlying workspace clutter.

Pros:

• Provides a much better, more curated user experience.
• Easier to manage permissions for a set of content rather than individual reports.
• Updates are seamless, when you update the app, all users automatically get the latest version.

Cons:

• Same licensing requirements as direct sharing (users need Pro/PPU unless the app is from a Premium capacity workspace).
• Slightly more setup involved than direct sharing.

Method 3: Publish to Web (Use with Extreme Caution)

Power BI offers a feature to "Publish to web" which generates an embed code that you can place on any public website. Warning: This option makes your report and its data publicly accessible. Anyone on the internet with the link can view it, and search engines could potentially index it. It should only be used for data that is truly public and non-sensitive.

How it Works:

1. Open a report and go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
2. A warning dialog will appear. Read it carefully. If you are certain the data is safe to be public, click "Create embed code."
3. Power BI will generate a link and an HTML iframe snippet that you can paste into a public blog post or website.

Viewers do not need any kind of Power BI license or to sign in. It is completely public.

Pros:

• The only way to share fully interactive reports with a completely anonymous, public audience for free.

Cons:

• Major security risk. There is no authentication. The data is available to anyone with the link.
• Not suitable for any confidential or proprietary business data. This method is often disabled by Power BI administrators for this reason.

Method 4: Embed in a Secure Portal or Website

For a truly seamless and secure experience, you can embed Power BI reports directly into a secure application, such as a client portal or internal website. This is known as Power BI Embedded.

This is a more advanced solution that typically requires developer resources. There are two primary models:

• Embed for your customers: Known as the "app owns data" model. Your application, not the user, authenticates with Power BI. Users sign in to your secure portal, and the portal displays the embedded report. The end-users don't need Power BI licenses. This is ideal for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) or businesses with custom client portals.
• Embed for your organization: Known as the "user owns data" model. Users must have a Power BI Pro license and sign in with their own credentials to see the embedded content. This is more common for internal company portals.

Pros:

• Fully integrated, professional, and branded experience.
• Highly secure when implemented correctly.
• "Embed for your customers" allows viewers without Power BI licenses to see content.

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Cons:

• Requires developer expertise and is significantly more complex to set up.
• Embedding carries its own capacity-based pricing, which can be an additional cost.

Method 5: The Old-Fashioned Way - Static Exports

Finally, you can always share your report as a static file. Power BI allows you to export your reports to PDF, PowerPoint, or analyze the data in Excel.

How it Works:

From a report, go to File > Export and choose your desired format. You can then attach this file to an email or share it via a cloud storage service like OneDrive or Google Drive.

Pros:

• Extremely simple and requires no Power BI license for the recipient.
• A quick way to provide a snapshot of the data.

Cons:

• The biggest downside: the data is not live or interactive. It's a static snapshot that becomes outdated the moment you export it.
• Filters, slicers, and drill-downs will not work in a PDF or PowerPoint file.
• Less secure, especially if you're sending sensitive data via email.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right way to share your Power BI reports externally comes down to your audience, security needs, and budget. For simple, one-off sharing, direct sharing or apps work well. For broad distribution to clients without managed Power BI licenses, leveraging Premium capacity or an embedded solution is the most professional and scalable approach.

We know that managing licenses, guest accounts, and different sharing methods in enterprise BI tools can be a major hurdle to just getting data in front of the people who need it. That’s why we built Graphed to dramatically simplify reporting. After connecting your data sources, you can create real-time dashboards with natural language and securely share them with anyone - internal or external - through a simple link. Stakeholders get the insights they need without needing special software or licenses, and you get back the time you used to spend managing permissions.