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Power BI Service — Publishing and Sharing

Publish reports to Power BI Service, organise in workspaces, and share with colleagues

Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) is the cloud platform where you publish, share, and manage Power BI reports. It is where your finished reports go so others can view them in a browser — without needing Power BI Desktop installed. Understanding Power BI Service is essential for any role that involves sharing reports with business stakeholders. A report that only runs on your laptop is not production analytics.

Example

Publish and share a report
PUBLISH FROM DESKTOP:
  1. Sign in to Power BI: File → Sign in
  2. Home tab → Publish
  3. Choose workspace (My Workspace for personal,
     or a team workspace)
  4. Click "Open [report name] in Power BI" to view online

WORKSPACES:
  My Workspace   → personal, only you can see
  Team Workspace → shared folder for a team
  Create: Power BI Service → Workspaces → Create workspace

SHARING OPTIONS (after publishing):

  1. SHARE (simple):
     Open report → Share → enter email → Send
     Recipient needs Power BI Pro licence to view

  2. PUBLISH TO WEB (public URL — no login required):
     File → Embed report → Publish to web
     ⚠️ WARNING: This makes report PUBLIC — use only
     for non-sensitive data

  3. POWER BI APP (organised package):
     Package multiple reports/dashboards into an App
     Distribute to a group of users
     Best for department-wide report rollout

REPORT vs DASHBOARD in Power BI Service:
  Report = full interactive report (what you built in Desktop)
  Dashboard = canvas with pinned tiles from reports (summary view)
  Pin a visual from a report → appears as tile on a dashboard

Key Points

  • ✓Free Power BI account: you can publish but sharing with others requires Pro licence
  • ✓Workspace = folder for reports, datasets, and dashboards — organise by team or project
  • ✓Publish to Web creates a public URL — never use for sensitive or internal data
  • ✓Dashboards (pinned tiles) update in near-real-time when the dataset refreshes
  • ✓Report consumers view in browser — no Power BI Desktop installation needed

Practice Question

You want to share a Power BI report with your team of 10 colleagues so they can view it in their browser. What do you need after publishing?

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