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[Sam Duval]

My company just purchased power bi premium as well as license for everyone to access power bi (e5 I think). Our primary reason for getting premium was for paginated reports.

I’m looking for you all to give some advice on some best practices for organizing the premium workspaces.

Especially since we won’t need them to grant access without licenses

Thanks!

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Sam Duval
Data Quality Analyst
Indianapolis
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[Robert Williams]

Hi Sam,

What do you mean you got premium for paginated reports?

The company I recently joined were hosting Report Server (so full of SSRS paginated reports). I upgraded that self-hosted report server to Power BI Report Server and still happily run paginated report, but can now upload PBIX files which will render in the browser.

The license for running the PBI RS is covered under our Software Assurance agreement. It all works out a damn sight less than buying 120 Pro licenses or paying for premium servers.

Otherwise I think you’ll be looking to setup workspace, managing access to them via groups, and probably looking to push out published apps to your users.

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Robert Williams
BI Developer
Hemel Hempstead
01923 693804
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[Sam Duval]

Hi ,
I believe the power bi report server is still a self-hosted “On-prem” (or azure virtual machine). My company wanted to stick with the approach of the server being Microsoft’s responsibility and we just rent the space and to keep the PBIX and rdls all in the same spot. We are heavy users of SSRS in sharepoint on-prem now, and are migrating to power bi, paginated reports and sharepoint online. I still don’t quite get how the “apps” work, we have some pbix files out there in service, and I copy and paste the url to the report and publish the link on a groups dashboard page, and the access it just fine. What does the app allow (besides easier permission setting)?

I wasn’t privy to the wheeling and dealing that went on in the licensing negotiations to know what deal was struck that ended up with upgrading everyone’s O365 licenses to now include power bi pro in addition to the premium capacity. We have already built a small starter space with PBIX reports in service, so we are familiar with the various workspaces and security and all that goes along with using power bi service. I’m specifically looking for words of wisdom from people who’ve deployed reports with premium capacity and what if/any best practices are out there for how to organize the workspaces. Should I create multiple premium workspaces or just one are there an settings I need to configure per workspace in regards to how the premium workspace functions? At this point i’m anticipating only putting paginated reports in the premium workspace, since everyone will have a pro license anyways, I am thinking i’ll keep the pbix in the “free” workspaces, and preserve bandwidth and storage in premium capacity for the paginated.

Thanks

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Sam Duval
Data Quality Analyst
Indianapolis
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[Dan Wilcox]

I am not sure these resources are precisely focused on your PBI Premium instance, but they are very helpful on the subject of workspaces and PBI governance.

Within this Community, the webinar recording Part 2: Lunch & Learn – Workspace Governance in the Real World (March 2019) addresses a variety of questions and provides sound guidance.

Melissa Coates (SQL Chick) has a presentation on her “old” site Best Practices for Delivering Content in the Power BI Service that also offers sound guidance and includes good guidance on workspaces.  I seem to remember finding video of Melissa’s presentation somewhere on the Web but can’t seem to track it down.

My organization is giving PBI Premium serious consideration now and I’d be interested in learning more about your thoughts and experiences.

Dan

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Dan Wilcox
CIO
Springfield IL
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[Sam Duval]

Thanks ,
I’ll check out those links and will share any feedback we find along the way. The big push to premium came as we explored power bi against our current reporting needs and found that being limited in screen and subscription real estate to what fits inside the canvas didn’t work for our operational data needs as a financial institution. We are pivoting the pbix to be it’s intended purpose of dashboards and quick insights from visuals and letting the paginated do the heavy lifting on tabular data delivery. We made the decision to pursue premium as the cost was slightly cheaper in the long run than it would have been to stand up the equivalent SQL server on an on-prem or azure virtual server. Even the PBI report server I think still requires the on-prem “like” installation and I assume would require in-house man hours to maintain and keep running, two things my company is trying to limit.

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Sam Duval
Data Quality Analyst
Indianapolis
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