How to Share Power BI App

You’ve built an insightful Power BI report, complete with compelling visuals and key metrics. The tough part is done, and now you just need to get it into the hands of your team. While Power BI offers a few ways to do this, bundling your work into an "app" is the cleanest and most professional way to deliver it. This guide walks you through exactly how to share a Power BI app, from the initial setup to managing user access, so your colleagues can start making data-driven decisions right away.

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First, What Exactly is a Power BI App?

In Power BI, the term "app" can be a little confusing if you're used to mobile apps on your phone. Think of a Power BI app as a polished, packaged container. It’s a way to bundle related dashboards, reports, and datasets together into a single, easy-to-distribute collection for your colleagues.

Here’s why using an app is often better than sharing individual reports:

• It’s Clean and Simple: Instead of sending links to five different reports, you send one link to the app. Users get a clean, branded experience without the clutter of the underlying Power BI workspace.
• Simplified Navigation: You can create a custom navigation menu for your users, organizing content into logical sections. This guides their experience and helps them find what they need without getting lost.
• Easier Permission Management: You manage access for the entire collection of content in one place rather than managing permissions for each report individually.
• Professional Delivery: You can add a logo, a description, and a theme color to create a professional-looking deliverable that feels like a finished product.

Essentially, you do all the development work in a workspace, and when it’s ready for prime time, you publish it as an app for your audience.

Before You Share: A Quick Checklist

Before you hit publish, there are a few prerequisites and best practices to keep in mind. Getting these sorted out first will save you a lot of questions and headaches later on.

• You Need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license: To create and publish an app, the publisher (that's you!) must have at least a Power BI Pro license. A free license user cannot publish an app.
• Content Must Be in an App Workspace: You cannot create or publish an app from your personal "My workspace." Your reports, dashboards, and datasets must reside in a separate app workspace. If they're in My workspace, you'll need to move them first.
• Understand Viewer Licensing: This is the most common point of confusion. For a colleague to view your app, one of two conditions must be met:
• Last-Minute Polish: Check for any typos, broken visuals, or confusing titles in your reports. Make sure your underlying data is refreshed and correct. First impressions matter, and you want your first app release to be a good one.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Share Your Power BI App

Ready to go? Let’s walk through the whole process, from navigating to your workspace to hitting the publish button.

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Step 1: Go to Your App Workspace

Your journey begins in the Power BI service online. Find the workspace that contains all the reports and dashboards you want to include in your app.

From the Power BI home screen, look at the navigation pane on the left. Click on Workspaces and then select the name of the workspace you want to publish from.

Step 2: Create or Update Your App

Once you are inside your workspace, you’ll see a list of all its contents (reports, datasets, etc.). In the top-right corner of the screen, you’ll see either a Create app button (if one doesn't exist yet) or an Update app button (if an app has already been published from this workspace).

Click that button to enter the app configuration screens.

Step 3: Configure the App Setup

The first tab you land on is "Setup." This is where you'll add the basic branding and informational details that your end-users will see first.

• App name: Give your app a clear and descriptive name like "Q3 Marketing Performance" or "Sales Team Pipeline."
• Description: Add a one or two-sentence description to give users context. For example, "A daily-updating dashboard of website traffic, campaign ROI, and lead generation from HubSpot and Google Analytics."
• Logo (Optional): Adding a company logo makes the app feel official and professional.
• App theme color: Pick a color that aligns with your brand to give your app a custom look.

You can also configure a contact link and a support site here, which is helpful if you are the main point of contact for questions about the data.

Step 4: Add Content and Build Your Navigation

Next, click on the "Navigation" tab (this might be labeled "Content" in some versions of the UI). This is where the magic happens - you decide what goes into the app and how it’s organized.

On the left, you'll see all the content available in your workspace. You can click the "Add content" button and select all the reports, dashboards, and external links you want to include in your app. Any items set to "Visible" here will be included.

For each item you include, you’ll see it appear in the navigation pane. Here, you can:

• Reorder content: Drag and drop items to arrange them in a logical sequence.
• Rename items: You can change a report's display name for the app without altering the original report’s name.
• Add sections: Use the "New group By" or "Add a section" functionality to group related reports. For example, you could have a section called "Paid Ads" that contains your Facebook Ads and Google Ads reports, and another section for "Website Analytics."
• Add links: You can add links to external resources, like a SharePoint folder with campaign assets or a shared document that explains the data definitions.

Taking a few extra minutes to organize the navigation well immensely improves the user experience.

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Step 5: Set Permissions and Grant Access

This is the most critical step - deciding who gets to see your app. Click on the "Permissions" tab (or "Audience" tab).

By default, no one has access. You need to explicitly grant it. Here, you can enter the names or email addresses of specific individuals or entire Office 365 groups (like "Marketing Team" or "Sales Managers"). Sharing to user groups is often easier to manage than adding dozens of individual emails.

Below the user entry field, you’ll see a couple of important options:

• Install this app automatically: If you check this box, the app will automatically appear in your specified users' "Apps" section. Use this with care. It's great for critical, company-wide dashboards, but for smaller team reports, it’s often better to let users install it themselves from the link you provide.
• Allow all users to connect to the app's underlying semantic models...: This one is for power users. Leave this unchecked if your audience only needs to view the report. Check it if you want to give them "Build permissions," which lets them create their own reports in Power BI using your app’s dataset.
• Allow users to make a copy of the reports...: This lets viewers save a copy of a report to their own "My workspace" to customize.

Step 6: Publish (or Update) the App

Once you’ve configured the setup, navigation, and permissions, the final step is to click the Publish app button in the bottom-right corner. If you are making changes to an existing app, this button will say Update app.

A pop-up will appear confirming that your app is published. It will also display a shareable link. Copy this link! This is the link you’ll send to your users to give them access.

After clicking "Go to app," you’ll be taken to the live version that your end-users will see.

Managing Your App After Launch

Your work isn't totally over once the app is live. You'll likely need to make updates or change access over time.

• Updating Content: When you modify and save a report back in the workspace, the changes are not automatically pushed to the live app. You need to return to the workspace and click Update app again to push your changes live. Users will then get a notification that the app has been updated.
• Managing Access: To add or remove users, simply go through the "Update app" and click to update your users in the permissions tab.
• Unpublishing an App: If you need to retire an app, you can go into the workspace, click the three-dot menu next to the "Update app" button, and select Unpublish app. This will remove it for all users.

Common Troubleshooting Questions

"My user got an error about needing a Pro or Premium license."

This is the classic licensing issue. It means the user has a free Power BI license and your app workspace is not in a Power BI Premium capacity. The solutions are to either upgrade the user to a Pro license or have your Power BI administrator move the workspace to a Premium capacity.

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"A user can open the app but can’t see any data in the charts."

This usually points to Row-Level Security (RLS) on your dataset. RLS filters data based on who is viewing it. If a user isn't assigned to any RLS roles, they will see blank visuals. You'll need to go to the security settings for your dataset and add them to the appropriate role.

"Can I share my app with people outside my company?"

Yes, you can, but your Power BI admin must enable this feature. It works by inviting external users as "Guests" in your organization’s Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Once they are B2B guest users, you can give them permissions to the app just like an internal colleague, but they will still need the appropriate PBI license to view the content.

Final Thoughts

Sharing a Power BI app is the best way to distribute your finalized reports and dashboards, offering a secure, polished, and organized experience for your team. By following these steps to configure setup, navigation, and permissions, you can confidently deliver a valuable BI asset to your organization.

While Power BI is incredibly powerful, we know that setting up and managing workspaces, permissions, and app navigation can feel like a full-time job. We created Graphed to cut that friction by letting you build and share real-time marketing and sales dashboards using plain and simple chat commands. Instead of manual setup and juggling permissions, you can connect sources like Google Analytics, HubSpot, or Shopify with one click and just ask for the report you require, all in a matter of moments.