Roles in the new workspaces in Power BI
Workspaces are places to collaborate with colleagues and create collections of dashboards, reports, datasets, and paginated reports. This article describes the different roles in the new workspaces, and what people in each role can do. Read more about the new workspace experience in Power BI.
Creating a new workspace? See Create a new workspace experience.
Roles let you manage who can do what in the new workspaces, so teams can collaborate. New workspaces allow you to assign roles to individuals, and to user groups: security groups, Microsoft 365 groups, and distribution lists.
To grant access to a new workspace, assign those user groups or individuals to one of the workspace roles: Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer. Here's how to Give users access to the new workspaces.
Everyone in a user group gets the role you've assigned. If someone is in several user groups, they get the highest level of permission provided by the roles they're assigned. If you nest user groups, all the contained users have permission. All of these capabilities, except viewing and interacting, require a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. Read more about licensing in this article.
Workspace roles
| Capability | Admin | Member | Contributor | Viewer |
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| Update and delete the workspace. |  |
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| Add/remove people, including other admins. | |
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| Allow Contributors to update the app for the workspace | |
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| Add members or others with lower permissions. | |
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| Publish, unpublish, and change permissions for an app | |
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| Update an app. | |
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If allowed 1 | |
| Share an item or share an app.2 | |
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| Allow others to reshare items.2 | |
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| Feature apps on colleagues' Home | |
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| Manage dataset permissions.3 | |
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| Feature dashboards and reports on colleagues' Home | |
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| Create, edit, and delete content in the workspace. | |
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| Publish reports to the workspace, delete content. | |
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| Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace.3 | |
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| Copy a report.3 | |
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| Create goals based on a dataset in the workspace.3 | |
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| Schedule data refreshes via the on-premises gateway.4 | |
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| Modify gateway connection settings.4 | |
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| View and interact with an item.5 | |
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| Read data stored in workspace dataflows | |
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1 Contributors can update the app associated with the workspace, if the workspace Admin delegates this permission to them. However, they can't publish a new app or change who has permission to it.
2 Contributors and Viewers can also share items in a workspace if they have Reshare permissions.
3 To copy a report to another workspace, and to create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace, you need Build permission for the dataset. For datasets in the original workspace, if you have at least the Contributor role you automatically have Build permission through your workspace role. See Copy reports from other workspaces for details.
4 Keep in mind that you also need permissions on the gateway. Those permissions are managed elsewhere, independent of workspace roles and permissions. See Manage an on-premises gateway for details.
5 Even if you don't have a Power BI Pro license, you can view and interact with items in the Power BI service if the items are in a workspace in a Premium capacity.
Note
- You can assign users to roles, either alone or in a group, even if they can't use the role. In other words, you can assign users who don't have Power BI Pro or PPU licenses to a role that requires a license. See Licenses in this article for details.
- To enforce row-level security (RLS) for users browsing content in a workspace, use the Viewer role. You can also enforce RLS without giving access to the new workspace. Publish an app and distribute it to those users, or use sharing to distribute content to them.
Licenses
If one of the new workspaces is in a shared capacity, everyone you add to it needs a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. These users can all collaborate on the dashboards and reports in the new workspace. If you want to distribute content to others inside your organization, either assign Power BI Pro licenses to those users or place the workspace in a Power BI Premium capacity.
When the new workspace is in a Power BI Premium capacity, users with the Viewer role can access the workspace even if they don't have a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. However, if you assign these users a higher role like Admin, Member, or Contributor, they're prompted to start a Pro trial when they try to access the workspace. If you want users without Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licenses to use the Viewer role, make sure they don't also have other workspace roles, either as individuals or as part of a user group, and ensure that they are not using a classic workspace. Classic workspaces do not support roles.
Publishing reports to the new workspace experience has stricter enforcement of existing licensing rules. If you try to publish from Power BI Desktop or other client tools without a Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license, you see the error, "Only users with Power BI Pro licenses can publish to this workspace."
Note
Power BI US Government isn't available as a Free license. For licensing details, see Power BI for US government customers.
Guest users
By default, Azure AD B2B Guest users can't access workspaces. Power BI admins can allow external guest users to edit and manage content in the organization. Enabled Guest users can access workspaces to which they have permission.
Considerations and limitations
A limitation to be aware of:
- A person with a Power BI Pro license can be a member of a maximum 1,000 workspaces.