Disclaimer:
This is not about the mobile app, but about the app within Power BI Services. This is a special area where reports and dashboards can be displayed together.
In order to use the new features, it is necessary to update the workspace to the new version, called V2 by Microsoft (You probably already have this version, as Microsoft will regularly notify you to update if you haven’t already).
Distribute content:
In Power BI there are mainly 3 ways to share things with others. After the reports been published to the Power BI Service you can decide between workspaces, and apps. When you are more familiar with Power BI you know that you can use subscriptions or embed reports, but we won’t cover these topics here.
In the following we are focussing on the Workspace and App Workspace Sharing capabilities.
Past State:
In the past, reports in Power BI were published to workspaces. The report developer published the report in a workspace and granted permission for endusers to it. The disadvantage of this was that thematically similar reports were still in 2 separate worlds for the end user.
For this purpose the Power BI App was introduced. With it, multiple reports could be provided in one app. For example, 5 reports resulted in 1 app in Power BI. In other words, an app could also be a thematic collection of similar content.
So far so good, what was bad about it now?
The biggest disadvantage was that you could only authorize the user on the entire app. This made it impossible to specify that a user should only have access to 2 of the 5 reports. Once I gave a user access to an app, they automatically had access to all of the underlying reports in that app. This was also true regardless of whether the person had a workspace or individual permission to the report.
Current State:
Microsoft introduced the Audiences preview feature in August 2022. This finally allows different target groups to be defined in an app.
It is important to know that there can still only be 1 app per workspace. What is new is that there can be multiple audiences in 1 app.
Setting up the app:
1. Create App:
Go to the workspace for which you would like to create an app. Then simply click on “create App” in the upper right corner.
Set the description, logo and other relatively self-explanatory settings of the app.
2. Define content:
Specify which content should be included in the app. Only content that is located in this workspace can be integrated.
In addition, external links can also be embedded, which you can use to refer to an internal wiki, for example.
Note that here you also define the order in which the individual reports are displayed in the app.
3. Create audiences:
On the left side you will find the individual reports and report pages. In the middle you will have the preview of the report and on the right side you can define the persons or groups that should belong to this audience. It is connected to your Active Directory.
With the eye symbol you can determine if a certain content should be visible for this audience.
You can create further audiences and define which content the specific audience is allowed to see. For example, you could create a CEO, top management and management audience with different approval of the individual reports.
In total, you can create 10 audiences per app.
Note that users that you have authorized for the workspace automatically inherit the read permission. They virtually overwrite your audience permission. Make sure that report consumers are only authorized on the app and not in the workspace.
4. Preview App:
Now you finally published your first Power BI App. As the workspace Admin you furthermore have the possibility to view the content from the end user perspective. Therefore you select the Audience you want to investigate. The end user will of course only see their specific point of view.
Advantages:
- If you don’t have AD groups. You could set an Audience as a virtual AD group and have new employees very easily entitled to all necessary reports with one click
- Nice presentation and easy navigation for the end user (additionally add hyperlinks with more information)
- Thematically it remains one area, but people can still view different things
- Changes in the app are only released by clicking “Update App” in the workspace
- Easier to maintain, as all relevant information can be found in one app
