How to Create Content Packs in Power BI

Sharing your data insights with colleagues shouldn't involve sending messy files or giving everyone direct access to your core reports. This is where Power BI's packaging and distribution features come in handy, and content packs were one of the original ways to solve this. This guide will walk you through exactly what Power BI content packs are and how to create them to share your dashboards and reports across your organization.

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What Exactly is a Power BI Content Pack?

Think of a Power BI content pack as a pre-packaged bundle of BI assets. Instead of sharing individual links to dashboards, reports, and datasets, you can group them all into one convenient package. When you share this package, your colleagues can easily access and use all the related components without needing direct edit permissions to your original work.

At its core, a content pack is a container for:

• Dashboards: The interactive, high-level overview of your data.
• Reports: The detailed, multi-page data dives a dashboard is built from.
• Datasets: The underlying data source that feeds the reports and dashboards.
• Excel Workbooks: You can also include data models you've built in Excel.

When users connect to your content pack, Power BI creates their own personal, read-only copy. They get to see and interact with all the work you've done, but they can't modify your original files, keeping your master versions safe and clean.

Why Bother Using Content Packs?

Creating content packs offers a few clear benefits for teams that need to standardize their reporting and get key information into the hands of decision-makers quickly.

• Standardization and Consistency: Ensure everyone on the team is looking at the same version of the truth. By packaging the official dashboard with its correct underlying report and dataset, you eliminate confusion caused by people using outdated information or different data sources.
• Easy Distribution: Instead of sending out multiple links or emails, you publish the content pack once. Your colleagues can then find and connect to it directly from within the Power BI service, right when they need it.
• Controlled Access: You decide who can access the content pack. You can make it available to your entire organization or limit it to specific security groups or Office 365 Groups (like the "Marketing Team" or "Sales Managers").
• Empowers Users Safely: While the dashboard and report copies are read-only, users can still connect to the dataset from the content pack to build their own custom reports. This allows them to answer their own specific questions without tampering with the original, curated content. You provide a governed, trusted dataset they can safely explore.

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A Quick Note: The Future is Power BI Apps

It is important to know that Microsoft has deprecated organizational content packs, meaning they are old technology and are being fully replaced. The modern and recommended way to share content is now through Power BI Apps.

So, why are we still talking about content packs? Many organizations that have been using Power BI for years may still have legacy content packs active. Understanding how they work is helpful for managing, updating, or migrating these older assets to new Power BI Apps.

Think of content packs as the V1 of sharing, and Power BI Apps as the more robust, flexible, and powerful V2. Apps offer a better user interface, more flexible permissions, and are easier to update. While the steps below are for content packs, the core concepts of bundling and sharing data are what evolved into Apps.

How to Create an Organizational Content Pack: Step-by-Step

If you're maintaining an older Power BI environment or simply need to know the process, here’s how to create and publish a content pack for your team. You must have a Power BI Pro or Premium license to create and share organizational content packs.

Before you begin, make sure the dashboard, report(s), and dataset(s) you want to share are published and ready within your own "My Workspace" or a group workspace.

1. Start the Creation Process

In the Power BI service online, look for the gear icon in the top-right corner of your screen. Click it to open the settings menu and then select "Create content pack."

This will open the "Create Content Pack" configuration window where you'll define every aspect of your package.

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2. Define Who Can Access It

Your first decision is an important one: audience scope. You have two primary options:

• Specific Groups: This is the most common and secure choice. You can type in the email addresses of specific Office 365 Groups, distribution groups, or security groups. For example, MarketingTeam@company.com or AllSales@company.com. Only members of those groups will be able to discover and access your content pack.
• My Entire Organization: Use this option carefully. As the name implies, publishing this way makes the content pack visible and accessible to every single person in your company with a Power BI license. This is best for very general, company-wide dashboards, like a global sales overview or key HR metrics.

Avoid entering individual email addresses, as this makes the content pack difficult to manage over time as people join or leave the company. It's always best practice to use groups.

3. Give it a Clear Title and Description

This is your chance to make the content pack easily discoverable and understandable for your colleagues.

• Title: Be specific. A title like "Marketing Campaign Performance Q3" is much better than "Marketing Report." Think about what your colleagues would search for in the AppSource to find your data.
• Description: Add a brief but helpful description. Explain what the dashboard shows, what data it includes, and perhaps mention the data's refresh frequency or who to contact with questions. Good descriptions prevent a lot of follow-up questions later on.
• Image/Logo (Optional): You can upload a company logo or an icon to help the content pack stand out visually in the AppSource library.

4. Select the Content to Include

This is the core step where you bundle your assets. You'll see a list of all available dashboards, reports, datasets, and Excel workbooks in the current workspace. Simply check the box next to each item you want to include in your package.

A key thing to remember: Power BI automatically handles dependencies. When you select a dashboard, Power BI will automatically include the report and dataset that the dashboard tiles are pinned from. You don't need to select them separately. If you select just a report, its dataset will also be automatically included.

5. Publish Your Content Pack

Once you've configured the access, title, description, and selected your content, double-check everything. When you're ready, click the "Publish" button at the bottom.

Congratulations! Your content pack is now live and available to the audience you specified. They will now be able to find it in their Power BI service under "Get Data."

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Managing and Updating Your Content Pack

Business doesn't stand still, and neither should your reports. Your original reports and dashboards are still yours to edit. The changes you make, however, won't automatically be pushed to people who have already connected to your content pack. You need to republish it to push out updates.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Navigate to the original workspace containing the content.
2. In the workspace view, click the gear icon again, and this time select "View content packs."
3. You'll see a list of content packs created from that workspace. Find the one you need to update and click "Edit."
4. This takes you back to the same configuration screen. You can re-select content, update the title, or change the description.
5. Once your changes are made, click "Update."

Existing users will see a notification banner next to the content pack in their navigation pane, letting them know an updated version is available. They can choose to accept the update, which will overwrite their copy with the new version, or continue using the older version for the time being.

Final Thoughts

While Power BI Apps have taken over as the new standard, understanding a predecessor like content packs provides valuable context into how business intelligence platforms have evolved to make data more accessible. The core idea remains powerful: package standardized, curated data assets so teams can make consistent, data-driven decisions confidently and safely.

We know that even with tools like Power BI, the process of connecting data, designing reports, and managing distribution can feel manual and time-consuming. At Graphed , we remove the friction by allowing you to connect all your sales and marketing sources in seconds. From there, you can just describe the dashboards and reports you need in simple, plain English. We turn hours of clicking, dragging, and formatting into a 30-second conversation, giving you back time to focus on strategy instead of report-building.