Providing Access to Datasets

Power BI DA-100 Exam Tips
Manage datasets
Providing access to datasets

In this series of blog posts, we will be examining some of the key features of Power BI Desktop, Power Query and the Power BI Service needed to pass exam DA-100: Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI.

In this Power BI training post, we will examine DA-100 exam – Manage datasets: Providing access to datasets.

Providing access to datasets

Naturally, when you publish a report from Power BI Desktop, the workspace will contain both a report and the dataset, and as the creator of the report and the dataset, you obviously immediately have access to it. And you can build further reports from that dataset.

Granting Access to a Single Dataset

To grant that same access to other users, you have two methods, you can either grant direct access to a single dataset, or you can grant access to the dataset via a workspace app. Let us look at the principal method first, and this is to grant access directly to an individual dataset. To do this, click on the ellipsis menu next to the name of the dataset, and choose Manage Permissions.

Next, click on Add User, and then enter either individual usernames, or, preferably, security groups. So, in this example, we will grant access to a security group called Report Developers.

So, anyone in that group can now build reports based on that dataset.

Granting Access to a Dataset via an App

Let us return to our Datasets workspace, and the second method of giving users access to the datasets, so that they can build reports from those datasets, is to do so via an app. The key distinction here is that you are given the user will have access to all the datasets within that app.

To do this, we simply click on Create App.

We then go through the wizard, the three different sections; set up navigation, and permissions, and the key setting that we need is in the Permissions tab.

Here, we have the ability to give the users the Build Permission: "Allow all users to connect to the apps underline datasets using the build permission".

Again, we can enter either users or security groups and then click publish app.

So, those are the two methods of allowing users to build reports from your datasets. The principal method is really using the manage permissions command. However, as you have seen, we also have the ability to allow users to access datasets by giving them the build permission when we publish an app