Day 16: Power BI Service & Sharing

In Power BI Desktop: Home → Publish → sign in with your Power BI account → select the workspace to publish to → click Select. This uploads the .pbix file and creates two items in the workspace: a Dataset (the data model) and a Report (the visuals). Once published, share the report URL with stakeholders or embed it in other applications. Required: a Power BI account (free account can publish to My Workspace; sharing with others requires Power BI Pro or Premium).

A workspace is a collaborative container in Power BI Service for reports, datasets, dashboards, and dataflows. Types: My Workspace (personal, private to you), App Workspace (collaborative — team members with different roles can view, edit, or contribute). Roles in a workspace: Admin (full control), Member (can edit content), Contributor (can add content but not publish apps), Viewer (can only view). Publishing an app from a workspace packages all content into a clean, versioned experience for end-users separate from the development workspace.

Scheduled refresh automatically re-imports data from source systems on a schedule — keeping your report current without manual republishing. Setup: In Power BI Service → Datasets → the dataset → Settings → Scheduled refresh → configure data source credentials → set frequency (daily, multiple times per day) and time. Limitations: Free accounts — no scheduled refresh. Pro — up to 8 times per day. Premium — up to 48 times per day. For real-time data, DirectQuery automatically queries the source on every visual interaction without scheduled refresh.

A Power BI App is a packaged, versioned collection of reports and dashboards published from a workspace for distribution to a large audience. Instead of sharing individual reports, you publish an App once and users install it. Benefits: users always see a stable, approved version (not the work-in-progress in the workspace). Updates are pushed by republishing the App. Users install the App from AppSource within Power BI. Navigation can be customised. Best practice for enterprise distribution: develop in a workspace, distribute via an App.

Power BI Free: can use Desktop, publish to My Workspace only, no sharing. Power BI Pro (₹700-800/user/month approximately): publish to shared workspaces, share reports with other Pro users, scheduled refresh, up to 1 GB dataset. Power BI Premium Per User (PPU): all Pro features + larger datasets (100 GB), advanced AI features, XMLA endpoint. Power BI Premium (capacity-based): entire organisation can view Pro-published content without individual Pro licences — suitable for large organisations distributing to many viewers. For Delhi NCR data analyst roles: most companies use Pro or Premium for the analytics team.