Power BI desktop, Power BI service and Power BI embedded service have been used in BGIS more than one year. But it seems that most of users require clarification among them.. I hope I can make it more clear through this Q&A list.
What's the difference between Power BI service and Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is an desktop application that allows anyone develops Power BI reports without Power BI service account. Power BI service is a cloud SasS which allows anyone having a Power BI service account to create and share Power BI reports online without installing any software locally.
Two differences between these two products:
- Power BI service needs Power BI service account but Power BI desktop doesn't
- Power BI service doesn't need install any software but Power BI desktop does. And Power BI desktop has new version almost once each year.
What's the difference between Power BI free license and pro license?
Power BI free or pro licenses refers to Power BI service licences. Power BI desktop doesn't need any license. The difference can be found in this link https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-free-vs-pro/. Here is my clarification:
- Power BI free license can NOT share dashboards even in your own "my workspace" to colleages anymore.
- Although Power BI free license can access same types of data sources as Pro license, "direct query" on premise data sources won't work under Power BI free license. For example: If you develop a Power BI report using SSAS cubes on your local server and publish it to Power BI service, you get errors on visuals because queries can't each local data data source. Enterprise Power BI Gateway solves this challenge but gateways are only available under Power BI pro license.
- "Scheduled data refresh" is one of Pro license features too.
- Free license can't create app workspace which is very useful to segment conents by line of business or group of audiences.
- users with Power BI pro license can create "content pack" and shared with other colleges with pro license. Other colleges can use it as template to modify contents and generate own versions.
BTW, Power BI accounts and licenses are manged through office 365.
What's Power BI premium for?
Power BI premium service is the feature I'm waiting for a long time. I got this challenge from upper
management comparing with tableau:"You keep telling me that Power BI is a cost effective way for enterprise BI solution. But we have more than 5000 users and you told me that all them users require Pro license to user Power BI service. That's 500K annually."
Why I required pro licence for all Power BI users before? because as a enterprise solution, almost all Power BI reports need gateway to access on premise data sources ,scheduled data refresh, live connections and APP workspaces. And all these features are Pro license features. But most of these users just viewers. They won't create enterprise Power BI reports and publish them into workspaces.
Power BI premium brings four benefits to answer this challenge:
- It's much cheaper than buying pro licenses for all users. P1 capacity just around $4000 per month. That's 400 pro licenses. But I noticed the report performance is improved. I guess because of dedicated resources.
- All Power BI service accounts can view all Power BI contents in Power BI Apps which corresponding App Workspaces have been enabled in Power BI premium capacity.
- Power BI premium created a dedicated Power BI resources to run Power BI services.
- Power BI premium can be scale up online.
You see, Power BI premium is not a type of individual licences. It's a PasS. That's why Microsoft call it "Power BI premium capacity". And corporations can buy more than one capacity or scale it up.
After corporate purchased the capacity, Power BI premium admin can assign App workspaces to different capacities. Then all Power BI services users can access Power BI Apps that are associated with Power BI App workspaces under Power BI capacities.
some hints:
- Power BI App and Power BI app workspace are two diffrent objects although Power BI App is PUBLIHSED from Power BI App workspace.
- Power BI App could grant office 365 group to access but Power BI app workspace can't. You have to assign access permission individually.
- Power BI App access and Power BI APP workspace access are unreleated although the app may be published from the Power BI App workspace.
- Fee users can view Power BI App content if it's published from workspaces that resides in a Power BI premium capacity. BUT they still can't view Power BI workspace contents.
Here is a good article about Power BI App: Create and distribute an app in Power BI
Power BI App is an existing feature. It provides some kind of "staging" function in production environment. You could deploy reports and dashboards to workspace first, verify them and then publish them to App in production. So the good practice is Power BI Apps should be the only interface to business users in production environment.
I suspect that Microsoft added this App concept for Power BI premium service although it kills two birds with one stone. Good job, Microsoft.
Why Power BI embedded service is critical for corprorations like BGIS?
So far, any users who want to access contents in Power BI service need to login PowerBI.com first or they need a Power BI account first. In some business cases, that's not acceptable.
For example,as a service provider serving multiple clients, we need to build deep customized client facing websites with client themes and allow them access Power BI contents without creating their own Power BI accounts and logging in PowerBI.com site.
That's what Power BI embedded for. It was an azure service alone before but it has one big drawback that scheduled refresh is not available. Microsoft converged Power BI premium and Power BI service together this time and is licensed in Power BI premium. Again, this is capacity license. Power BI embedded has it's own pricing model. If you just need Power BI embedded capacity, then just buy that only.
Here is process flow for Power BI embedded from Embedding with Power BI:
Under "new" Power BI embedded service, this is a really cool feature:one single Power BI REST API. That opens all potentials for ISVs. Refresh the data set publish reports to various environments... can all be done pragmatically.
The Pricing is not too bad:
And that's the next step I'm going to do: How to migrate Power BI Embedded workspace collection content to Power BI
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