How to Share Power BI Workspace
Sharing a Power BI workspace is the easiest way to collaborate with teammates on dashboards, reports, and datasets. Getting your sharing strategy right means giving everyone the access they need without handing over the keys to the kingdom. This guide will walk you through exactly how to share your workspaces, explain what each user role means, and cover best practices for keeping your data secure and organized.
What is a Power BI Workspace?
Think of a Power BI workspace as a shared workshop for your team's analytics projects. It's a central place where you can create, modify, and manage a collection of related business intelligence content, including:
Dashboards: Single-page visuals that provide a high-level overview of key metrics.
Reports: Multi-page, interactive deep dives into your data.
Datasets: The underlying data models that reports and dashboards are built on.
Dataflows: Processes for transforming and preparing data.
Every Power BI user has a "My Workspace" by default. This is your personal sandbox - a private area for your own projects and test reports. You cannot share your "My Workspace" with anyone else. To collaborate with others, you need to use an "app workspace," which is specifically designed for teamwork.
When you and your colleagues have access to a shared app workspace, you can work together to build a complete analytics solution. For example, a data analyst might connect the data sources and build the dataset, a report creator could design the visuals and dashboards, and managers can access the final reports to monitor performance - all from within the same collaborative environment.
Before You Share: Understanding Power BI Workspace Roles
Before you start adding people to your workspace, it's essential to understand the different levels of permission you can grant. Giving someone the wrong role can lead to accidental changes, deleted reports, or giving sensitive data access to the wrong people. Power BI provides four distinct roles to control what users can do inside a workspace.
Admin
An Admin has the highest level of permission and complete control over the workspace. Think of this role as the owner of the workspace. Only give this role to people who need to manage the workspace itself, not just the content within it.
An Admin can:
Do everything a Member, Contributor, or Viewer can do.
Add or remove any other user, including other Admins.
Change the role of any user in the workspace.
Update or delete the workspace itself.
Publish, update, and manage workspace apps.
Manage and refresh data gateway connections.
When to use it: Best reserved for the project lead, the team manager, or the dedicated Power BI administrator for the team. Keep the number of Admins to a minimum (ideally two, for backup).
Member
A Member has almost as much power as an Admin but with a few key limitations. Members are trusted creators and collaborators who can manage content and share access with most other users, but they can't change fundamental workspace settings or remove other Admins.
A Member can:
Do everything a Contributor or Viewer can do.
Add or remove users with Contributor or Viewer roles.
Publish, edit, and update reports and dashboards.
Publish and update an app for the workspace.
Share individual items (reports, dashboards) with other users.
When to use it: Perfect for key team members who are actively building and managing the BI solution. These are the main report creators and data handlers who need broad permissions to do their job effectively.
Contributor
As the name suggests, a Contributor's role is focused on creating and editing content within the workspace. They can build new reports, update existing ones, and manage datasets. However, they can't manage user access or publish/update the workspace app.
A Contributor can:
Create, edit, copy, and delete reports, dashboards, and other content within the workspace.
Interact with reports (e.g., drill down, filter data).
View and pull data from the underlying datasets.
When to use it: Use this role for people whose job is to build and maintain the reports but who shouldn't have control over who sees the content. This is a common role for data analysts or business analysts on a project.
Viewer
A Viewer has read-only access to the workspace content. This is the most restrictive and safest role, designed for pure consumers of information. They can't make any changes to the reports or datasets.
A Viewer can:
View and interact with reports and dashboards (filter, cross-highlight, slice data).
Read data stored in the workspace.
A Viewer cannot:
Edit or create any content.
Share content with others.
Publish or update an app.
Access the underlying datasets directly.
When to use it: This is the ideal role for managers, stakeholders, or anyone in the wider organization who just needs to see the final reports and stay informed without the risk of accidentally modifying them.
Step-by-Step Guide: How to Share a Power BI Workspace
Once you’ve decided which roles your teammates need, adding them to the workspace is a simple process. You’ll need to have Admin or Member permissions in the workspace you want to share.
Navigate to Your Workspace
In the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com), look for the "Workspaces" menu on the left-hand navigation pane. Click on it to expand the list and select the workspace you want to share.
Open the Access Panel
Once you're in the workspace view, look to the top-right corner of the screen. You will see a button labeled "Access." Click this button to open the access management panel.
Add People or Groups
In the access panel, you’ll see a field that says "Enter a name or email address." Start typing the name or email of the person or group you want to add. Power BI will search your organization's Microsoft 365 directory and suggest a list of matching users. You can add individual people or entire email distribution lists or security groups (e.g., "Sales Team," "Marketing Department").
Assign a Role
After selecting a person or group, a dropdown menu for their role will appear. It defaults to "Viewer," but you can click it and select the appropriate role: Admin, Member, Contributor, or Viewer.
Finalize and Notify
Once you’ve selected the role, click the "Add" button. The users will be added to the workspace immediately and receive an email notification letting them know they've been given access as long as the default notification is set. You can repeat this process for everyone you wish to invite.
A Better Way to Share: Publishing a Workspace App
Directly sharing a workspace is great for your core project team, but it’s often not the best way to distribute finished reports to a wider audience. Giving dozens or hundreds of people direct workspace access can be messy and confusing for them. They'll see all the content, including drafts, test reports, and raw datasets. This is where a Power BI App comes in.
A Power BI App bundles specific dashboards and reports from your workspace into a polished, easy-to-use package for business users. It separates the "creation" environment (the workspace) from the "consumption" environment (the app).
Why Use an App Instead of Direct Workspace Access?
Better User Experience: An app provides a simplified and focused view. You curate the content, so consumers only see the final, relevant reports they need. No more confusing lists of datasets or half-finished dashboards.
Greater Control: You decide exactly which reports and pages are included in the app. You can hide reports that are still in development and set a specific navigation experience for users.
Enhanced Security: Users of an app don't have edit access to the underlying reports in the workspace. It's a secure, read-only way to distribute insights.
Simplified Permissions: Instead of managing numerous individuals in the workspace, you can publish an app and grant access to large audience groups efficiently.
How to Publish an App
Creating and sharing an app is straightforward:
Navigate to your workspace and click the "Create app" button in the very top-right corner.
On the Content tab, select which reports and dashboards from your workspace you want to include in the app.
On the Audience tab, you define who can access the app. You can grant access to your entire organization or specify certain people or groups.
Customize settings like the app's name, description, and color.
Click "Publish app."
Once published, you'll get a direct link to the app that you can share with your audience.
Best Practices for Workspace Sharing and Management
To keep your Power BI environment tidy and secure, follow these simple best practices:
Use the Principle of Least Privilege: Always grant users the lowest level of access they need to do their jobs. Don't make someone a Member if all they need to do is view reports. The Viewer role should be your default.
Leverage Microsoft 365 Groups: Instead of adding individual users one by one, manage access using Microsoft 365 security groups or distribution lists. When someone joins or leaves a team, you only need to update the group membership, and their Power BI access will be automatically adjusted.
Conduct Regular Access Audits: At least once a quarter, review who has access to your important workspaces. Remove users who have left the company or no longer need access.
Use Separate Workspaces: Don’t throw everything into one gigantic workspace. Create distinct workspaces for different departments (Sales, Finance, Marketing) or major projects to keep content organized and secure. This prevents marketing team members from stumbling upon sensitive financial data by mistake.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how to share a Power BI workspace properly is fundamental to effective collaboration. By understanding the different user roles and choosing the correct method between direct access and publishing an app, you can ensure your team can work together efficiently while stakeholders get the clear, secure insights they need to make decisions.
While mastering permissions in sophisticated BI tools is a valuable skill, sometimes the goal is just to connect your data and get answers quickly. When building Graphed , we focused on eliminating that friction. You can connect sources like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Shopify in a few clicks, then create and share real-time dashboards just by asking questions in plain English. This gets your team the insights they need instantly, moving you from manual reporting and complex configurations to faster, data-driven decisions.