How to Create an App Workspace in Power BI

Creating a Power BI workspace is the first step toward building collaborative reports and dashboards for your team. This guide will walk you through exactly what a workspace is, how to create one step-by-step, and best practices for managing it effectively. Think of this as your central hub for group projects, where you can develop, refine, and securely share data insights.

What is a Power BI Workspace?

In Power BI, a workspace is a shared environment where you and your colleagues can collaborate on dashboards, reports, datasets, and dataflows. It’s a dedicated space, separate from your personal "My Workspace," designed specifically for teamwork. While "My Workspace" is your private sandbox for individual projects, an "app workspace" is the collaborative studio where your team brings data to life together.

Imagine a shared folder on a company drive. Anyone with access can add files, edit existing ones, and view the final product. A Power BI workspace functions similarly but is purpose-built for business intelligence. It allows multiple people to:

• Co-author and edit Power BI reports.
• Share datasets that can be used across multiple reports.
• Bundle content together into a polished "app" for easy viewing by stakeholders.
• Manage permissions to control who can view, edit, or manage the content.

Essentially, workspaces are the foundation for any serious organizational use of Power BI. They prevent data silos by creating a single source of truth and streamline the process of building and sharing insights across a department or an entire company.

Before You Start: Workspace Prerequisites

Before you can create a workspace, you need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license. The free Power BI license is great for individual learning and exploring, but it restricts you to your personal "My Workspace." Collaboration is a premium feature.

If you have a free license and try to create a workspace, Power BI will prompt you to start a free Pro trial. All members who need to edit or manage content within the workspace will also need a Pro or PPU license. Viewers, however, might be able to access the content with a free license if the workspace is hosted in a Power BI Premium capacity. For simplicity's sake, just assume a Pro license is needed for any collaborative development work.

How to Create a Power BI Workspace: Step-by-Step

Creating a new workspace is a straightforward process. Just follow these steps in the Power BI service (the web version of Power BI, not the Desktop app).

Step 1: Navigate to the Workspaces Pane

Log in to your Power BI account at app.powerbi.com. On the left-hand navigation menu, you will see an icon for "Workspaces." Click on it to open the Workspaces pane, which lists all the workspaces you have access to.

Step 2: Create the Workspace

At the bottom of the Workspaces pane, click the + Create a workspace button. This will open the "Create a workspace" configuration screen.

Step 3: Fill in the Basic Details

First, you need to provide some fundamental information:

• Workspace name (Required): Give your workspace a clear, descriptive name. This is how everyone will identify it, so avoid generic names like "Test" or "Marketing Dashboard." A good name might be "Quarterly Sales Performance" or "Marketing Team - Campaign Analytics."
• Description (Optional but highly recommended): This is your chance to provide context. What is the purpose of this workspace? Who is it for? What kind of content lives here? Writing a brief but informative description helps new members understand the workspace’s intent right away.

Step 4: Configure the Advanced Settings

Next, expand the "Advanced" section. This contains some important configuration options that define how your workspace functions.

Contact list: By default, this lists the workspace admins. You can add other users or groups here. Power BI will send system notifications about the workspace (like deletion warnings or capacity issues) to the people and groups listed. It's a good practice to use a distribution group email (e.g., bi-team@yourcompany.com) so that notifications don't get tied to one person who might be out of office.

License mode: This is a critical setting. It determines the features available for the workspace and who can access its content.

• Pro: This is the standard setting for teams where all users have Pro licenses.
• Premium per user (PPU): For workspaces where you'll use premium features, like paginated reports or larger datasets, and all collaborators have PPU licenses.
• Premium capacity: This option is for organizations with a dedicated Premium "P" SKU. It allows users with free licenses to view content from this workspace without needing a Pro license.
• Embedded: This is a specialized choice for developers using Power BI Embedded in custom applications.

For most teams starting out, Pro is the correct choice.

Default storage format: You can choose between "Small data models" and "Large data models." The "Large data models" format is required for datasets that are expected to grow beyond 100 GB and optimizes them for performance. Unless you know you're working with massive datasets, the default "Small data models" setting is fine.

Step 5: Save your Workspace

Once you’ve configured everything, click the Save button. Your new workspace will be created and you'll be taken directly to its empty home page, ready for you to add content.

Adding Content and Managing Access

An empty workspace isn’t very useful. The next step is to populate it with reports and datasets and then invite your team to collaborate.

Adding Content

You can add content to your workspace by:

• Publishing from Power BI Desktop: This is the most common method. When you publish a report from the Desktop app, you can choose your new workspace as the destination.
• Uploading Files: Inside the workspace, click the + New or Upload button. Here you can upload .pbix files, Excel workbooks, or .csv files directly.
• Creating New Content: You can also create new content like dataflows or paginated reports directly within the service.

Managing Workspace Roles and Permissions

To invite your team, click the "Access" button in the top right corner of your workspace view. Here, you can add people by entering their email addresses and assigning them a role. Power BI has four distinct roles:

Choose the right role for each person to maintain security and ensure that only authorized users can make changes.

From Workspace to App: Sharing Your Insights

Once your workspace has a collection of polished reports and dashboards, you can bundle them into a Power BI app. While the workspace is your development studio, the app is the finished art gallery you share with a wider audience.

An app provides a cleaner, simplified navigation experience for business users who just need to view the data. They won't see all the underlying datasets and messy development files - just the final reports and dashboards you've chosen to include.

To create an app:

1. Inside your workspace, click the Create app button in the top-right corner.
2. In the Setup tab, give your app a name, description, and upload a logo to customize its appearance.
3. In the Content tab, select which reports and dashboards from your workspace you want to include in the app.
4. In the Audience tab, you define who can access the app. You can share it with specific people, entire security groups, or your whole organization.

Publishing an app decouples content consumption from content development. It lets your team continue to work and experiment within the workspace without affecting the stable, published version that business users rely on.

Final Thoughts

Power BI workspaces are the core of team-based analytics, providing a shared environment to create, manage, and distribute business intelligence content. By following these steps to properly set up a workspace, manage access with roles, and publish a consumer-friendly app, you can build a more data-driven and collaborative culture on your team.

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