Learning Microsoft Power BI

Chapter 9. Licensing and Deployment Tips

Congratulations! Your report was a huge hit. You took disparate data from different sources, brought that data together, and provided insights from that data that pushed your organization forward. You are keeping your PBIX file up to date, adding new reporting features and measures, and maybe even correcting the odd error or two.

Then you finally experience what every business intelligence professional both hopes for and inevitably dreads. You unlock the imagination of the organization. Now they want you to spread the Power BI gospel across the organization so that other parts of the org can not only leverage what you’ve built, but also build things for themselves.

First, take a deep breath. Next, let’s talk through key questions that will help you put the pieces in place to empower your organization on its larger Power BI journey. What kind of licensing structure should we pursue? What’s Pro versus Premium? When does Premium capacity make sense? How do we manage our workspaces and our apps? How do we assign users to roles we created for RLS? How do we make sure our database administrators (DBAs) don’t kill us by having a crazy dataset refresh schedule!? Let’s talk about it.

Licensing

A license itself is a simple idea. It’s a purchased agreement that allows you to use a service for as long as you continue to pay for it. Some products have different levels of functionality inside that service, and you may choose to pay for one ...