What is Power BI user access?

Power BI allows restricting access to users on the workspace, report level, and data level.

Authentication (Limit access to content)

Limit access to Power BI through the admin portal. So, users will have limited privileges in the Power BI workspace. If we use Power BI apps to share reports, we can limit access to report content in the app.

Authorization (Limit access to data using RLS in Power BI)

Limit access to data with row-level security (RLS). So, roles can be created in the Power BI dataset with specific data access, and users or groups can be added to these roles.

How to implement Power BI row level security

Follow the below steps to implement roles in the Power BI desktop for row-level security.

1. Open the Power BI report using the Power BI desktop.

2. Navigate to the Modeling tab and Click the ‘Manage roles’ button.

3. Click the ‘Create’ button to create a new role on the ‘Manage roles’ screen. You can apply filters for each role based on your requirements.

If you want to implement row-level security so that an employee can only see his/her own data, then you can use the below filter condition on the email address column of the Employee table.

[Email] = userprincipalname()

In the above case, the Employee table should be related to the fact table to filter the data to filter data based on logged-in users.

4. Depending on the requirements, You can add as many roles as you want.

Review RLS in Power BI Desktop

Once you have defined all your roles, Testing them on the Power BI desktop before publishing the report is recommended. Follow the below steps to do it.

1. In the Power BI desktop file where you implemented the RLS, navigate to the Modeling tab and click the ‘View as’ button.

2. Select the role you want to test on the ‘View as roles’ popup screen. You can check the ‘Other user’ checkbox, enter the email address of the person you want to test the RLS with, and Click OK.

3. The report will show data only for the selected role and user.

Once you have reviewed the RLS, you can publish this report to the Power BI service.

Add users to Power BI roles.

Now, let’s add users to the Power BI roles defined in the Power BI report. Follow below quick steps below to do it.

1. Navigate to the Power BI workspace containing the report. Click on the Ellipsis […] icon next to the Power BI report dataset containing the roles and Click on Security, as shown in the image below.

2. Select the role, search for people you want to add to the roles, and Click Add.

3. Make sure to Save the changes once you have finished adding people to the roles.

Add user access to Power BI reports

Users should also have access to reports unless the users have workspace-level permissions. To grant access to the report, follow the below steps.

1. Navigate to the PowerBI workspace and Click the Ellipsis […] icon next to the Power BI report. Click on ‘Manage permissions’.

2. Click the’ Add user’ button Under the ‘Direct access’ tab.

3. Search for the user and choose the appropriate settings as shown in the below image.

Repeat the above steps for all the reports using the shared RLS dataset.

Test Power BI row level security

Once you have added all the users to their respective roles, testing RLS in the Power BI service is a good idea before sharing the reports with end users. You can refer to this post to learn more about it.

Pro tips:
1. If members are not added to the role but have access to the report containing dataset RLS, then RLS will not be applied to them.

See more

The post Power BI row level security – Step by step guide appeared first on AzureOps.

Prerequisites:
1. Download and install the latest Power BI desktop.
2. Azure active directory user has rights to connect to Azure analysis services.

Steps to connect to Azure analysis services from Power BI desktop.

1. Open Power BI Desktop.

2. Click on Get Data in the Home ribbon.

3. Click on Azure on the left part and select Azure Analysis Services database, as shown in the image below.

4. Enter the server name “asazure://westeurope.asazure.windows.net/youraasname” and Select the ‘Connect Live’ radio button. Click OK. It may ask you to log in. Select the ‘Microsoft account’ option and authenticate using your Azure active directory credentials.

5. Select the database NameOfYourASDB and click OK.

6. Once you click OK, you should see the model as shown below in the picture.

Pro tips:
1. Microsoft provides two types of analysis services models: multidimensional and tabular. Read this article to know how they differ from each other.
2. Refer to this post to connect to Azure analysis services from SSMS.

See more

The post Connect to Azure Analysis Services from Power BI appeared first on AzureOps.

Last refresh failed: 9/4/2023, 2:11:28 PM
Scheduled refresh has been disabled.
Data source error: Scheduled refresh is disabled because at least one data source is missing credentials. To start the refresh again, go to this dataset’s settings page and enter credentials for all data sources. Then reactivate scheduled refresh.

Solution

Follow the below steps to fix the above error.

1. Open the workspace containing the report dataset and click the elips […] icon next to the dataset name. Click on Settings, as shown in the below image.

2. You may need to take over the ownership of the dataset to edit the data source credentials.

3. Expand the data source credentials section and set all credentials.

In case the Data Source Credentials are Greyed out and are not editable in the Power BI service.

1. Check if your PowerBI report has any issues using the PowerBI desktop. You can check the Power Query editor to see if any query has errors or warnings.
2. You may have a broken data source connection.
3. Check the data source permissions and make sure you have necessary permissions to access the data sources.

Fix the problem and publish the report once again. Now the data source credentials should be editable in Power BI service.

Above steps should resolve ‘Scheduled refresh is disabled’ issue in Power BI dataset in Power BI service.

Pro tips:
1. If you want to test RLS in Power BI or run Power BI report as a different user in Power BI service, you can follow this article.

See more

The post Scheduled refresh is disabled because at least one data source is missing credentials. appeared first on AzureOps.

Let us assume that the measure is ‘time in seconds’. Use the below calculated measure to format this measure as Time.

time mmss =
VAR hh = TRUNC(([time in seconds])/3600)
VAR mm =TRUNC(MOD([time in seconds],3600)/60)
VAR ss = MOD([time in seconds],60)
return TIME(hh,mm,ss)

Select the new measure ‘time mm:ss’ and then on the top ribbon of the Power BI desktop, change the format of the measure to ‘h:mm:ss’ as shown in the image below.

You can now display this new measure in a card visual in h:mm:ss format. Please note that you cannot use this measure in other charts like bar or pie charts.
We have seen how to show seconds as hh mm ss in Power BI.

Pro tips:
1. If your measure is already a date, you can just format it in the required format using the Format option in the top ribbon of Power BI desktop.
2. Refer to this article to learn how to export all measures from Power BI desktop file using PowerShell.

See more

The post Show seconds as hh mm ss in Power BI appeared first on AzureOps.

What is a Power BI template file?

The PBIT file keeps your report structure and contains ‘DataModelSchema File’ instead of ‘‘DataModel file. This means it doesn’t include any data from your source systems, and the size of this file is very small. However, it has Report pages, visuals,  data model definitions, and query definitions. Read more about it here.

Steps to export measures from Power BI file.

1. Save the Power BI file as Power BI template (.pbit)

1. Open the Power BI (.pbix) file in PowerBI Desktop.

2. Click on the File menu item and click Save. Click ‘Browse this device’ button at the bottom left side.

3. Select the Template (.pbit) file type and give a name to the Power BI template file as shown in the below image.

2. Run below PowerShell script.

Copy the below PowerShell script in PowerShell ISE and provide the path to the folder containing the Power BI template file (.pbit) exported in step 1 to variable $pbitFolderPath. Also, give the name of the template file to the $pbiFileName variable.

#Path containing pbit file
#Parameters
################################################################
$pbitFolderPath = "D:\PowerBI files\"
$pbiFileName = "Sample PBI"
################################################################
$pbitFileName = $pbiFileName  + ".pbit"
$pbitFilePath = $pbitFolderPath + $pbiFileName  + ".pbit"
$zipFileName =  $pbiFileName + ".zip";
$exportMeasuresFilePath = $pbitFolderPath +$pbiFileName + ' Calculations.csv'
$zipFileFullPath = $pbitFolderPath + $zipFileName

#Rename pbit file to zip file.
Rename-Item -Path $pbitFilePath -NewName  $zipFileName

#Temp. export file path
$exportPath = $pbitFolderPath + "export\"

#Unzip zip file
Expand-Archive -Path $zipFileFullPath -DestinationPath $exportPath

#DataModelSchema file full path
$dataModelSchemaFullPath =  $exportPath + "DataModelSchema"
$strFileName = "DataModelSchema.json"

#Rename DataModelSchema file to DataModelSchema.json
Rename-Item -Path $dataModelSchemaFullPath -NewName  $strFileName 

#Get the JSON from DataModelSchema.json
$dataModelSchemaJsonFullPath = $exportPath + $strFileName

$jsonStr = Get-Content $dataModelSchemaJsonFullPath -Encoding unicode | Out-String

#Convert the Json to a dynamic object
$outJson = ConvertFrom-Json $jsonStr 

#Extract the tables to a list
$outTables = $outJson.Model.tables

"Table Name, Calculation Type, Calculation Name, Value" | Out-File $exportMeasuresFilePath  

#Remove hidden system generated date tables.
$outTables = $outTables | Where-Object {$_.isHidden -ne $true}

foreach ($outTable in $outTables) 
# Foreach Table in Power BI desktop
{
if ($outTable.measures -ne $null) 
{
$outMeasures = $outTable.measures
foreach ($outMeasure in $outMeasures) 
{
 $("{0} , {1} , {2}, {3}" -f $outTable.name, "Measure", $outMeasure.name, $outMeasure.expression -join " " | Out-String)  | Out-File $exportMeasuresFilePath  -Append
# Write the measure and expression 
}
 }
  if ($outTable.columns -ne $null) 
  { 
  $outColumns = $outTable.columns
  $outColumns = $outColumns | Where-Object {$_.type -eq "calculated"} 
  # Filter on calculated columns only, but this could be removed for all 
  foreach ($outColumn in $outColumns) 
  { 
   $("{0} , {1} , {2}, {3}" -f $outTable.name, "Calculated column" , $outColumn.name, $outColumn.expression -join " ") | Out-File $exportMeasuresFilePath  -Append
  }
}
}
write-host "Calculations written to "$exportMeasuresFilePath 

Rename-Item -Path  $zipFileFullPath -NewName  $pbitFileName

#Clenaup temp files
Remove-Item $exportPath -Recurse

The output of the above script execution will be stored in ‘<PowerBI filename> calculation.csv’ file in the same folder containing the Power BI template file. The result might not be well-formatted csv as the exported calculations can have ‘,’ in its definitions.

Pro tips:
1. Output of the above PowerShell script also includes calculated column expressions.
2. If you are using DAX Studio, you can also export measures from Power BI using Dax Studio
3. To test row-level security, you can read this post if you want to run the Power BI report as a different user.

See more

The post Export Measures From Power BI Desktop appeared first on AzureOps.

What is Power BI user access?

Power BI allows restricting access to users on the workspace, report level, and data level.

Authentication (Limit access to content)

Limit access to Power BI through the admin portal. So, users will have limited privileges in the Power BI workspace. If we use Power BI apps to share reports, we can limit access to report content in the app.

Authorization (Limit access to data using RLS in Power BI)

Limit access to data with row-level security (RLS). So, roles can be created in Power BI dataset with specific data access, and users or groups can be added to these roles.

How to implement RLS in Power BI?

Read this quick post to learn how to implement row-level security in PowerBI.

Steps to Test RLS in Power BI Service

1. Launch PowerBI.com and navigate to your workspace.

2. Open the Power BI report for which you want to Test RLS or run it as a different user.

3. Click on the ellipsis icon (…) next to the Edit button and click See related content button .

4. On the Related content page, click the ellipsis icon (…) next to the shared dataset containing RLS. Click on Security.

5. On the Row-Level Security page, click the ellipsis icon (…) next to the role you want to test. Click on Test as role.

This should open the report (opened in step 2) you wanted to test with RLS.

5. Click on the dropdown arrow next to your selected role, as shown in the image below. You can now enter the email address or name of the person whose user access you would like to test. And Click Apply.

6. Using the same dataset, You may repeat the steps to test Row-level security for other Power BI reports.

Although this process seems more complex, this is the only way to achieve this now. We hope that Microsoft will introduce a more sophisticated way to Test RLS in Power BI.

Pro tips:
1. If you want to test the Power BI report as user user1 for a particular role, user1 must be part of that role under the Row level security page.
2. You can also test Power BI access using Power BI desktop View as an option under the Modeling tab. It is recommended to TEST row level security in Power BI model using Power BI desktop first.
3. You can export all measures and calculated column expressions from Power BI desktop using a PowerShell script. Learn more about it here.
4. Refer to this article if you want to format seconds as h:mm:ss format in Power BI card visual.

We have seen how to test RLS in Power BI using the Power BI test as role feature.

See more

The post How To Test RLS in Power BI Service appeared first on AzureOps.

Let’s assume that you belong to the organization AzureOps.org and you want to share reports with Guest.com users. There are three broad ways to achieve this.

1. Duplicate guest user accounts in target Power BI organization (AzureOps.org) – Duplicate guest accounts in the target organization are not so popular, and users must remember two credentials.
2. Power BI embedded with custom authentication – Use Power BI embedded SKU and embed Power BI reports and authenticate external users using custom authentications.
3. Azure B2B Power BI sharing with external users – Sharing reports with external users require you to invite external (Guest.com) users into your organization AzureOps.org.

The best way to share Power BI reports with external users is by using Azure B2B.

What is Azure B2B

Azure Active Directory Business-to-business (B2B) collaboration is a feature within External Identities that lets you invite guest users to collaborate with your organization.

B2B Power BI sharing with external users

There are two different ways you can invite external users into your organization.

Azure Active Directory level

Add guest,com email addresses as an external user in your organization AzureOps.org Azure active directory. And grant access to Power BI workspaces to these guest users based on needs.

Power BI App level

Create an app in Power BI App workspace in AzureOps,org tenant. Now, grant access to Guest.com users directly on this app.

The user must accept the invitation for external access in both of the above ways. External users can now access Power BI reports using their Guest.com email addresses.

What license is needed?

Guest.com users or security groups can access Power BI reports in AzureOps.org tenant only if.

1. AzureOps.org has Power BI premium capacity (P SKU).
2. If tom@guest.com does not have a pro license in Guest.com Power BI, AzureOps buys a pro license for Tom in AzureOps.org Power BI tenant.
3. tom@guest.com already have a pro license in their Guest.com tenant.

We can even grant access to an external security group in AzureOps.org tenant, so we don’t need to worry about what all external users should have access to reports. In this case, Guest.com can manage its users in a security group, say AzureOpsTeam@guest.com, and AzureOps.org needs to grant access to this group in one of the above two ways.  With this, AzureOps.org doesn’t need to maintain individual external users. However, external parties (Guest.com) must ensure that all users in the security group have Pro licenses.  

Controlling access

Limit access to content (admin portal)

Limit access to AzureOps Power BI through the admin portal. So, external users will have limited privileges in the AzureOps Power BI workspace. If we use Power BI apps to share reports, we can limit access to report content in the app.

Limit access to data (RLS)

Limiting access to data can be done with row-level security (RLS) in the same way we do for internal users. So, roles can be created in Power BI with specific data access, and external users or groups can be added to these roles.

Pro tips:
1. We can create only one app per workspace.
2. If we share reports using Power BI apps, external users must store the app link.
3. If you want to test RLS in Power BI or run Power BI report as a different user in Power BI service, you can follow this article.

See more

The post Share Power BI Report with External Users appeared first on AzureOps.