Sharing Reports Without Losing Control

You publish and share reports through the Power BI Service.

Content:

You've built a good report. Everything works: visuals, KPIs, slicers… And then comes the exciting bit: you share it with your team, your manager or the board.

A lot of people still do that the old way: export to PDF, or email the .pbix file. Or they put everything on OneDrive with a note: "The report is here."

But Power BI isn't Excel. You share through the Power BI Service, and there's a lot you can get wrong if you're not paying attention. Think of making your whole dataset public by accident, or giving people too many rights.

Power BI Service

In this lesson you'll learn how to share reports in a smart, safe and manageable way. So the right people see the right things and you don't have to explain every month where to click.

How do you share your reports today?

As a PDF?
In a shared folder?
Or do you publish through the Power BI Service?

What works well? And where do you get stuck?

Think about that for a moment. Later on we'll show you what you can do better.

Where does this go wrong?

A report is finished. The maker emails the file to 5 team members. Someone changes a filter and forwards it to someone else. Someone else makes their own copy. Someone exports it to Excel. And nobody knows which version is current anymore.

Result: confusion, double interpretations, wrong decisions. And you get to sort it out.

What's the right approach?

Power BI has its own online environment: the Power BI Service. This is where you publish reports, manage permissions, and make sure people always see the most recent version.

1. Publishing to a workspace

You publish your report from Power BI Desktop to an online workspace. That workspace is your distribution point. Keep in mind:

Don't use a personal workspace ("My workspace") for business reports.
Create separate workspaces per team or project.
Limit who is allowed to publish.

2. Sharing a report through an App (preferred)

From a workspace you can bundle one or more reports into a Power BI App, a kind of walled-off environment with a clean interface.

Power BI App

From the workspace, the "Create app" button publishes your reports as a walled-off app. Source: Microsoft Learn

Advantages:

You control what people do and don't see.
You can roll out updates without users having to do anything.
Everything is always current, no more sending versions around.

3. Setting permissions and roles

Power BI workspaces have four roles:

Role	Can publish	Can edit	Can view	Manages members	RLS active?
Admin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Member	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Contributor	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Viewer	No	No	Yes	No	Yes

When you share a report through the Power BI Service, you usually work with a workspace. In such a workspace you can add others with different roles:

Admin: can do everything, edit reports, change permissions, adjust workspace settings. → Almost nobody needs to be this. One admin per workspace is usually enough.

Admin:

Keep reading

Leave your name and email address and you can read the rest

You get the whole lesson right away, and every other lesson stays open after that. No password, no confirmation email.

Contributor: can edit and publish reports. → Ideal for team members who build or adjust dashboards.

Contributor:

Viewer: can view reports, but not edit them. → Note: this role is only needed if you want to give people access to the workspace itself. In most cases you share the report through an app, and then users don't need to be in the workspace at all. You only give them access to the app.

Example: a report for the sales team

You've built a report with the dataset from lesson 1.2. You want:

To keep adjusting it yourself and add people
One colleague to develop alongside you
The sales team to only view (with no risk of them breaking something)
Nobody to delete or overwrite things by accident

Then you set it up like this:

You → Admin

Admin

The colleague who builds with you → Contributor

Contributor

The sales team → access to the App (automatically viewer of the app)

That way you keep control, you avoid a mess in your workspace, and users always see a clean, walled-off version of the report.

Use groups (Microsoft 365 or security groups, for example) to make administration easier.

4. Sharing a link = not always safe

You can share a report with a direct link, but that's tricky. Especially if the setting "Anyone with the link" is active. Then the report can end up outside your organisation too

"Anyone with the link"

So prefer "share with specific people" or go through an app.

?Knowledge check

You want to share a report with 20 colleagues who may view it but not change it. What's the best approach?

Sharing method	When to use	Downside
App	Distribution to a team or department	Requires a Pro licence or Premium
Direct link	Quick sharing with 1-2 people	No control over who forwards it
Workspace access	Developers working together	Users also see other content

Workspace roles in Power BI

Power BI has four workspace roles (not three!):

Admin: full control, can add and remove members
Member: can publish and edit content, but can't manage members
Contributor: can publish and edit content
Viewer: can only view and interact

Important: RLS only works for Viewers. Admins, Members and Contributors always see all data, regardless of RLS roles.

PDF export	Static snapshot for the board	No interactivity, quickly outdated
Emailing the .pbix	Never	No version control, data drifts

?Knowledge check

What's the difference between the workspace roles "Contributor" and "Viewer"?

What people often get wrong

"I'll put it in a shared folder, then it's sorted." Not in Power BI. Then you're sharing the file instead of the report. You miss updates, security and control.

"I'll put it in a shared folder, then it's sorted."

Not in Power BI. Then you're sharing the file instead of the report. You miss updates, security and control.

"Everyone in the workspace should be able to edit too." Nonsense. Most people only need to look, they don't need to tinker.

"Everyone in the workspace should be able to edit too."

Nonsense. Most people only need to look, they don't need to tinker.

"The link works, so it's fine." Until someone forwards the link to outsiders… and you're explaining why your sales report is public.

"The link works, so it's fine."

Until someone forwards the link to outsiders… and you're explaining why your sales report is public.

A bit deeper: sharing outside your organisation

Want to share a report with someone outside your organisation (an accountant or a partner company, for example)? Then you have two options:

Add a guest user to your tenant → Can be a hassle, but it's safe

Add a guest user to your tenant

Publish to web → Only for fully public data! Anyone with the link can see everything

Publish to web →

Better alternative: use a PDF export if you really have to, but say clearly that it's a snapshot.

Tips and checks from practice

Never put your main report in "My workspace". Always create a shared workspace.
Check that your permissions are right: who is allowed to do what?
Make the app your default way of distributing, it saves you explanations and mistakes.
Give your report a clear name ("Quarterly report, board version") so people know what it's for.
Put the publication date somewhere in the report itself (with a measure like TODAY()).

Practical example:

You've built a dashboard for the sales team (dataset from lesson 1.2). Instead of emailing the file:

You publish it to a workspace "Sales dashboards"
You turn that into an App and share it with the account managers
You set permissions: they can view, but not change anything
Result: everyone works with the same version, there's no confusion, and you keep control

Common mistake: sharing a report without thinking about access.

You build something good, but forget who's allowed to see it. Or you share too widely. Or not widely enough. And then people start making their own exports again.

Solution: think about your audience and your distribution plan before you publish.

Assignment:

Use the report you made in lesson 2.3.

lesson 2.3

Publish it to a workspace (or a practice environment).
Create an App from this workspace and add only this report.
Think about: Who should see this report? What permissions do you give those people? Do you need to change anything in the report for that (filters, privacy, for example)

Think about:

Who should see this report?
What permissions do you give those people?
Do you need to change anything in the report for that (filters, privacy, for example)

Reflection question:

If someone shares your report with someone else tomorrow, can you still see who sees what?