How to Distribute Power BI Reports

Creating a beautiful, insightful Power BI report is a great first step, but it doesn't deliver value until it reaches the right people. How you get that report into the hands of your team, clients, or stakeholders is just as important as the data it contains. This guide will walk you through the various methods for distributing your Power BI reports, from simple sharing to fully automated subscriptions and embedded analytics.

First Things First: Workspaces and Licensing

Before you can share anything, it's important to understand two core Power BI concepts: Workspaces and a Power BI Pro or Premium license. Think of these as the foundation for all your distribution efforts.

My Workspace vs. App Workspaces

In Power BI, you create reports within a "workspace." There are two main types:

• My Workspace: This is your personal sandbox. It's great for development and for reports that only you need to see. You can do some basic sharing from here, but it's not ideal for team collaboration.
• App Workspaces: These are collaborative spaces where you and your colleagues can work together on reports, dashboards, and datasets. This is where most team-based work and formal distribution happens. Every distribution method we'll discuss works best when originating from an App Workspace.

A Quick Word on Licensing

To share Power BI content with others, you generally need a Power BI Pro license. Likewise, the people you share it with will also need a Pro license to view it. The alternative is Power BI Premium, which is a capacity-based license. If your organization has Premium capacity, you (as the report creator) still need a Pro license, but you can share reports with users who only have a free Power BI license. For most teams, starting with Pro for all users is the standard approach.

Method 1: Direct Sharing (For Quick, Small-Scale Collaboration)

The most straightforward way to distribute a report is to share it directly with a few colleagues. This method is perfect for ad-hoc analysis or when you need immediate feedback from a small, defined group.

How to Share a Report Directly:

1. Open the report you want to share from your workspace.
2. Click the Share button located in the top action bar.
3. In the "Share report" window, you can enter the email addresses of individuals or Microsoft 365 groups you want to share with.
4. Choose the permissions for the recipients:
5. You can also toggle an option to send an email notification, which is generally a good idea.
6. Click Share. Your colleagues will receive an email with a link or find the report in the "Shared with me" section of their Power BI service.

Best for: Sharing a single report with one or two team members for review, or quickly answering a specific question for a manager.

Limitation: Can become messy and hard to manage if you're sharing dozens of reports with many different people.

Method 2: Publish a Power BI App (The Most Professional Method)

Creating a Power BI App is the recommended way to distribute content to a larger group of consumers. An "App" is a bundled package of related reports, dashboards, and datasets that you publish from a single workspace. It provides a much cleaner, more professional viewing experience for your audience.

Instead of sending your users ten different links to ten different reports, you send them one link to your App, which contains all ten reports organized with easy navigation.

How to Create and Publish a Power BI App:

1. Navigate to the collaborative workspace that contains the content you want to distribute.
2. In the top-right corner, click the Create app button.
3. In the Setup tab, give your app a name, description, and optionally upload a logo. This is your chance to brand the experience.
4. Move to the Content tab. Here you will see all the items in your workspace. Select which reports and dashboards you want to include in the app.
5. Go to the Audience tab. This is where the magic happens. You grant access to the entire app here, defining who can see it. You can grant access to your entire organization or specify individuals and groups. If you have different audiences who should see different reports, you can create multiple audience groups within the same app, toggling visibility for each piece of content.
6. Once you've configured everything, click Publish app in the bottom right.

Your users can then find your app in the "Apps" section of Power BI or by using the direct link you provide. When you update the reports in the workspace, you simply go back and click "Update app" to push the latest versions to all users.

Best for: Distributing a collection of reports for a project, department, or an entire organization. It's structured, controlled, and easy for end-users to navigate.

Method 3: Embedding Reports Where Your Team Already Works

One of the best ways to encourage data use is to bring the insights to platforms your team uses every single day. Power BI's embedding capabilities make this simple and effective.

Embedding in SharePoint Online

If your organization uses SharePoint for project sites or intranets, you can embed a live, interactive Power BI report directly onto a page.

1. In Power BI, open the report and go to File > Embed report > SharePoint Online.
2. Copy the embed link provided.
3. In SharePoint, edit the page where you want to add the report.
4. Add a new web part and search for "Power BI."
5. Paste the embed link you copied into the Power BI web part's properties. It will render the live report right on the page.

Embedding in Microsoft Teams

Teams is the central hub for collaboration for many companies. You can add a Power BI report as a tab within any Teams channel, making data a persistent part of the conversation.

1. In the Teams channel, click the "+" icon to add a new tab.
2. Select the Power BI app.
3. Navigate to the report you wish to add from your Power BI workspaces.
4. Click Save. The report will now appear as a dedicated, interactive tab within that channel.

Method 4: Subscriptions via Email (For Automated Delivery)

For stakeholders who prefer having reports pushed to them on a schedule, subscriptions are the perfect solution. A subscription will email a snapshot of a report page and a link back to the full report at a frequency you define.

How to Set Up Email Subscriptions:

1. Open the report you want to create a subscription for.
2. In the top menu, click Subscribe to report.
3. In the pane that appears, click Create a subscription.
4. You can subscribe yourself or add other users in your organization (you will need a Pro license, and they will need a Pro license or the report must be in a Premium workspace).
5. Choose the report page you want to send in the email.
6. Set the schedule (e.g., Daily, Weekly on Monday at 8:00 AM).
7. You can add a subject and optional message to the email for context.
8. Choose whether to include a live link back to the report in Power BI and a preview image or a full PDF/PowerPoint attachment.
9. Click Save.

Best for: Pushing snapshots of critical KPIs to executives daily, sending weekly performance summaries to department heads, or automating regular client reporting.

Note: While very useful, remember that attachments (like PDFs) are static. The data is only as fresh as the moment the email was sent.

Method 5: Exporting as Static Files (When Interactivity Isn't Needed)

Sometimes, all you need is a static image of your report to drop into a presentation or send as a simple attachment. Power BI allows you to export reports to PDF and PowerPoint.

To do this, simply open the report and navigate to Export and choose either PowerPoint or PDF. You can choose to export the current view or apply other filters. Each page of your report will become a separate slide or page in the resulting file.

Best for: Including data visuals in presentations, creating printable handouts for a meeting, or archiving a report at a specific point in time.

Best Practices for Successful Distribution

Following these tips can help your delivery be effective:

• Know Your Audience: A board member might only need a high-level KPI dashboard delivered as a PDF subscription, while an analyst will want full access to the interactive App to slice and dice the data. Tailor your distribution method to the user's needs and data literacy.
• Govern Your Data: For sensitive data, consider implementing Row-Level Security (RLS). This allows you to use a single report but show different data to different users based on their role, ensuring people only see what they're supposed to see.
• Provide Context: Never just send a link. When launching a new App or sharing a new report, include a short message explaining what it is, what data it shows, and who to contact with questions. Good documentation goes a long way.
• Organize with Apps: As soon as you have more than a handful of related reports, graduate from direct sharing to a Power BI App. It keeps everything organized, reduces clutter for your users, and is far easier to manage permissions for.

Final Thoughts

Building a valuable Power BI report is just the starting point, making sure those insights reach your audience is where the real impact happens. By selecting the right distribution method - whether it’s a professional App for your department, an embedded report in Teams, or an automated email subscription for your C-suite - you can transform your data from a static file into a powerful engine for decision-making across your business.

Mastering these distribution options in Power BI unlocks a lot of potential, but sometimes your team needs instant answers without the setup. We built Graphed to connect your sources like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Shopify, letting you ask questions in plain English and get live dashboards in seconds. It’s perfect for streamlining ad-hoc reporting and empowering everyone to get the insights they need, right when they need them, so you can share a live-updating report with just a link in less than a minute.