Manage Permission And Giving Access To Power BI Reports And Dashboards

Introduction

Security management, permission, and access control is a crucial part of any kind of system. To view and analyze the report, the dashboard user should have access to it. Without access, users cannot view and see the reports and dashboards. This article will describe how to manage permission and give users direct access to the Power BI reports and dashboards. To manage permission and give access to reports and dashboards, you should be the admin or owner of the workspace or report and dashboard. In this article, we will learn two ways to grant users direct access to the report.

Method 1. Direct access from Manage permission

Step 1. Share Report with Direct access

Go to the workspace containing reports or dashboards to which you want to give access to the user. Click on the share option of the report/dashboard as shown below,

Step 2. Manage permission

After clicking on the Share option you will get the below dialog. Click on More options (…) in the upper right of the sharing dialog box and then click on Manage permission.

You will get the Manage permission pane as shown below. You can see a list of people having access to this report or you can add a new user having direct access to this report. To add a new user, click on the + icon.

Step 3. Provide user and Grant access

Then provide the username or email address and click on Grant Access. Here, you can add multiple users and share reports at a time. You can select or unselect the sharing and build report option available on the dialog box as per your need.

Allow recipients to share this report

If you select this option while giving permission then the user will get the option to share this report or dashboard with another user.

Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report

This option allows the user to build a new report using the data/dataset of this report or dashboard that you are sharing. You can select or unselect these options as per your user permission level or need.

Send an email notification

With this Send an email notification option selection, the user gets an email with a link to view the report or dashboard. The below image shows a sample email notification.

In this way, you can give access to the report to the users.

Method 2. Direct access from the advanced option

On the other hand, you can go to the Advance option and get direct access to the report. In Method 1: Step 2, instead of Direct Access + click on the Advanced option as illustrated below,

Alternatively, you can go to Manage permission with advanced options directly from more options from your workspace as shown below,

On the manage permission page with the advanced options, you can see Links, Direct access user list, and pending list. Additionally, you can see related content like Dashboards, Workbooks, Datasets, and Shared Views as depicted in the below picture.

You can do the following things from the Manage Permission page.

• View, manage, and create Links.
• View and manage who has Direct access as well as grant users direct access.
• You can view all Pending access requests to the report and dashboard and invitations as well.
• View and manage Related content.
• Additionally, you can apply Filters or Search for specific links or people.
  

Direct access

For Direct access you can go to the Direct Access tab, you can see all the users who have direct access to this report and dashboard as well and you can give the new users direct access. To give the new users direct access click on add user as shown below. Then the user will get access to the report.

You will get below dialog box below. Provide a username or email address then select, or deselect the permission for the user and click on Grant Access. Additionally, you can write some additional messages/notes for users which is optional.

You will get the same sharing options as method 1. If you select the Send an email notification option, then the user will get an email with a link to view the report.

Removing Direct access and Sharing

We can remove the direct access and sharing option for existing users from Power BI Service permission management. If you want to remove access to the user, you can click on the … more options and then click on remove access.

Go to more options of the user which you want to remove and click on Remove access as illustrated.

To remove access, click on Remove access and you will get the below window dialog then click on Remove access as depicted.

Similarly, to remove the reshare option to the user, click on the … (more options) and click on Remove reshare.

Pending Tab

When a user requests access to the report or dashboard it will be listed under the Pending tab. From this pending tab, you can Approve and Decline the access request of the user. In my screenshot you can see that, I don’t have any Pending requests in the list for this report in my workspace; however, you can select and approve or decline the request if you have any requests.

Similarly, you can manage permission and access for the dashboard. However, sharing the dashboard via links is not available for now. So, for the dashboard, you cannot see the Links Tab in the Manage permission window.

Conclusion

Overall, this article has described two ways to grant access to the Power BI reports and dashboards. Additionally, we have learned to remove access and re-share options to the existing user. Hope this helps you to manage permission and access in Power BI.

Reference

Microsoft-Share Power BI Reports and Dashboards