How to share Power BI reports to clients via app.powerbi? Also what is the difference between report and dashboard in power bi app?

Question

I'm a newbie in Power BI..

I need to develop a tabular report (no visualizations) in Power BI and publish it to powerbi app so that client can see live reports. For that what are the settings we have to do in app.powerbi or powerbi cloud? When I published a report in my pbi cloud, in the report section, there is an option to publish /embed code. But it says the content will be available to public. So how can we restrict access? Do the client need to have pbi account to share the reports? Please let me know what type of PBI account we have to purchase to meet this requirement.

Also is it mandatory to create dashboard in order to share it to the client? Because report option serves the purpose? Is there any advantages in creating dashboard over reports?

Or do you feel any other suggestions rather than Power BI?

Data format: txt, tab delimited Type of data: Medical records

Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Power BI world has different things:

1. Power BI Desktop (PBID)- this is fat desktop client to create reports. You can use it for free.
2. Power BI Services (PBIS)- this is SaaS application that allows you create reports and share it. When you open powerbi.com you work with this app. All you reports located in logical containers - workspaces. This container like folder, nothing more. You can publish report from Desktop here into specific workspace. You can embed report from there, but without authentication, thus everyone can see it.
3. Power BI Embedded (PBIE)- this is PaaS solution to embedded reports into you app. Reports anyway should be stored into some workspace at PBIS. But you app can implement auth and show only specific reports to particular users. All users in you app can see different content and reports, based on your app logic, because you manage access to report via PBIE SDK. Take a look at playground.

So when your users work with PBIS they work with Microsoft Web App, if you want embedded same reports into you app, use PBIE with provided SDKs.

As for licenses. In fact there is only one license type: PRO. If your users want publish and share reports using PBIS they ALL must have PRO licenses. That the point. You can use all products free unless you want share you reports and analysis. If you need to share you have to pay.

Different thing for PBIE. You implement your app as you wish, you manage you users. They should not have PRO licenses. In fact, you need one license to store you reports. I call this like service account. This is regular PBIS user with PRO license. You use it only for publishing reports and storing it at PBIS and you app use it to load and embedded reports. If you have 1000 users, you can buy 1 license and use it to publish you work and all users will be authenticated in you app, authorization also will be done in your app. Another thing, that once you go in prod you need to buy capacity - Power BI Embedded Services at Azure. The cost depends on renders. Read more docs on this.