09 · Publishing & Sharing Basics¶
Up to now everything has lived in a file on your PC. Publishing moves it into the Power BI service, where it can refresh on a schedule and reach other people. This lesson covers the first publish and the main ways to share, with enough mechanics to avoid the usual surprises.
What you need
Publishing requires signing in to Power BI Desktop with an organizational (work or school) account whose tenant has the Power BI service enabled. Sharing with others generally requires a paid per-user license or a capacity workspace (see lesson 01). Microsoft offers trials and developer programs from time to time; availability changes, so check the current options rather than relying on this page.
Workspaces¶
In the service (app.powerbi.com), Workspaces in the left navigation lists:
- My workspace — personal. Fine for experiments; don't build shared content here.
- Shared workspaces — created with New workspace. Each has members with a role:
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Admin | Everything, including managing membership and deleting the workspace |
| Member | Publish, edit, share, add Contributors/Viewers |
| Contributor | Publish and edit content; cannot share items or manage access by default |
| Viewer | View and interact; cannot edit |
Step by step: publishing¶
- In Desktop, save the report (e.g.
Trailhead Sales.pbix). - Home → Publish. Sign in if prompted.
- Choose the destination workspace, click Select.
- When it finishes, click the Open in Power BI link.
- In the workspace list you'll now see two items with the same name: a Report and a Semantic model.
- If the source is a local CSV, the semantic model's settings will show that refresh can't run without a gateway, or credentials need configuring. That's expected — lesson 09 of Level 2 covers refresh. For now, the published data is a snapshot.
Publishing again with the same file name to the same workspace asks whether to Replace the existing items. Replacing keeps the item IDs, so links, dashboards and shared access keep working.
Report vs semantic model vs dashboard¶
- Open the report: pages look like Desktop, with slicers and interactions. Readers can use Edit only if they have edit rights.
- Open the semantic model item: settings for refresh, credentials, security, and endorsement; also Explore and Create report, which build new reports on the same model.
- Build a dashboard: in the report, hover a visual → Pin visual (pin icon) → New dashboard, name it. Pin two or three visuals. The dashboard is a single page of tiles; clicking a tile goes back to the report page it came from.
Ways to share¶
| Method | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Share button (links / direct access) | A few colleagues | Grants access to one item; can allow or block reshare and building on the model. |
| Workspace roles | The team that builds and maintains content | Everyone in the workspace sees everything in it. |
| Apps | A wider audience of readers | Bundle reports/dashboards; audiences can see different subsets; readers get a stable, curated experience while you keep editing in the workspace. |
| Teams / SharePoint embedding | Where people already work | Still respects permissions. |
| Publish to web | Genuinely public data only | Anyone with the link can see it, no sign-in. Often disabled by tenant admins. Never use for internal data. |
For the Level 1 project, share the report with one colleague by Share → specific people, and untick Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report unless you want them building on your model.
How It Actually Works¶
A .pbix is a ZIP archive containing, among other parts, a report layout (JSON), the
data model (a serialized Analysis Services database — the DataModel part), and the
Power Query mashup definitions. On publish, Desktop uploads the file; the service
splits it:
- The model is loaded into the service's Analysis Services infrastructure as a semantic model. Imported data comes along as it was at the last refresh in Desktop.
- The report layout becomes a separate report item whose data binding points to that semantic model by ID — a live connection, in effect.
Because they're separate, you can later rebind a report to a different model, delete a report without touching the model, or create many thin reports on one model.
Access checks happen at query time. When a reader opens a report, the service checks their permission on the report, and every visual's DAX query executes under their identity against the model — which is how row-level security (Level 2) filters data per user even though everyone opens the same report. A shared link does not bypass that check: it grants a permission; it doesn't hand over data.
Common mistakes¶
- Building everything in My workspace, then leaving the company. Content in personal workspaces is awkward to recover.
- Deleting and republishing instead of replacing, which breaks dashboard tiles and shared links because IDs change.
- Using Publish to web for internal reports. It is public on the internet.
- Granting workspace Member to readers. Readers should get Viewer, or an app.
Exercise¶
- Publish your report to a new workspace called
Trailhead – Learning. - Pin the revenue card and the region chart to a new dashboard. Click a tile and confirm it navigates to the report.
- Write down, for a hypothetical 200-person sales team plus 3 analysts, which of the sharing methods above you would use for each group and why.