Power BI Embedded (SKU A) - Learn more about the license that does not need a PRO account to view reports

Hey guys!
In this article, I will share with you more information about Power BI Embedded (SKU A) licensing for Power BI, which starts at R$5.64. You can purchase this license through the Azure Portal, allowing you to insert your reports into third-party applications, where you do not need a PRO account to view the reports and you can even pause/resume the resource to save even more and also upscale and downscale dynamically using the API.

In this article, we will discover the characteristics of this type of licensing, when it is interesting and when it is not.

Summary of all Power BI license types:

Power BI Embedded (SKU A)

Summary

The Power BI Embedded license is aimed at small, medium and large companies, with a large number of users, and with the need to insert reports into internal and/or external applications, where users do not need to pay for a license to view the reports.

In this type of licensing, users do not even need a Power BI account to view the reports and can even use personal emails (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.), but viewing users do not access the Power BI portal (powerbi.com) but rather a web portal that the company will need to hire or develop internally. This is how users without a PRO license can view reports without needing a license.

This type of access where the company will use a personalized portal can open up several possibilities of having a personalized URL (e.g. bi.suaempresa.com.br), a completely personalized look, deviating from the powerbi.com standard, infinite possibilities for integrations, customizations and even being able to implement features that not even the Power BI service has, such as Dark Theme, reports organized in multi-level folders and much more.

The process of creating and publishing reports continues exactly the same way: User who is going to publish reports needs a PRO account, develops the report in Power BI Desktop, publishes it in a workspace, configures updates, gateways and access credentials. The permission and RLS part will be different, as viewer users no longer exist in Power BI, permissions and RLS control is implemented in the application code and no longer in the Power BI service.

This type of license is charged per hour it is connected (from R$5.64 per hour) and if it is paused, the billing stops. In fact, Microsoft collects the number of seconds that the resource was on in the month, convert it to hours and charge. Remember that when capacity is paused, users will NOT be able to access any reports from this workspace and updating datasets will fail.

THE API allows you to automate the pause/on process the resource and even increase or reduce capacity, depending on demand.

Association with Workspaces

When you change a workspace to use an Embedded capability, your workspace becomes a PREMIUM workspace, including all the features you would have access to if you were using a Premium Per User workspace. The difference here is that even those with a PRO account can access the reports published in this workspace and enjoy all the benefits of a Premium workspace (in the PPU workspace, only users with a PPU license can access).

A workspace may or may not be associated with a capability (Premium, Embedded, Fabric, PPU). A capability can be associated with none, 1, or multiple workspaces. You can have multiple Embedded or Fabric capabilities in your organization, or even mix different types of capabilities.

To change the workspace association from Fabric to Embedded or vice versa, simply contract the desired capacity and change the Premium settings of the workspaces that will be migrated to the new contracted capacity. This process takes less than 1 minute per workspace.

From tier A2 onwards, you can now use AI and AutoML cognitive services (Machine Learning) with Dataflow (Dataflow)

Notes on capacity usage in this type of licensing:
– All reports will be processed by a single capacity that is associated with the workspace, meaning there may be a problem with resource usage concurrency.
– Updating datasets, processing DAX measurements, and rendering reports share the same capacity vCores.
– Many large models (> 150 MB) updating at the same time can overload capacity (which may be associated with multiple workspaces).
– Analysis Services can be a great support to take over the processing of DAX updates and processing instead of capacity.
– Large models using DirectQuery do not have data updates (they consume less capacity than Import mode).
– Capacity can be paused during non-usage times and increased to a higher tier during peak usage.

The way to contract for this license is through the Azure portal. There are no significant differences between the price of the resource in Brazil and the USA.

Capacity table

Features and Limitations

What you can do with this license:

• Download Power BI Desktop (always free, even without an account)
• Create reports, connecting to any data source
• Publish reports to your personal workspace and shared workspaces
• Share reports that use Premium features with users who don't even have a Power BI account
• Use data streaming
• Configure personal and enterprise data gateway to update local data up to 48x per day (for each dataset)
• Use tokens and API to embed unlimited reports in third-party applications
• Use the feature Publish to the web (CAUTION: Use ONLY with PUBLIC data. NEVER, EVER use this feature with private data)
• Subscription to report by email (Anyone receiving it needs a PRO or PPU account)
• Use the generate secure link feature to Insert report on Website or Portal
• Use Dataflows
• Access or create applications
• Use paginated reports
• Use incremental update
• Use datasets sizes up to 10 GB
• Have workspaces with sizes up to 100 TB
• Update datasets up to 48 times per day
• Use Incremental update of Dataflows
• Use hybrid tables (Import + DirectQuery)
• Use Datamarts
• Use XLMA Endpoint
• Use deployment pipelines (DevOps)
• Use integration with GIT
• Use AI and AutoML with Dataflows (From tier A2 onwards)
• Report subscription by email WITHOUT PRO or PPU account (Need to implement via code)

What you CANNOT do with this license:

• Users who will view the data DO NOT access the Power BI reporting portal. You will have to create or hire a portal to access the reports.

Microsoft Fabric vs Power BI Embedded

Both capabilities allow you to make reports available in applications legally, without having to pay for a per-user license to view the reports.

The big difference between the 2 is that Fabric, in its lowest available capacity (F2), has 4x less processing power than Embedded's lowest capacity (A1), and therefore, its initial cost was lower until November 2023, when Microsoft released the feature. reserved instance for Microsoft Fabric, which reduces the monthly amount by 41%.

See more information about the comparison between capabilities on this link here.

When we compare the same capacity between Fabric (F8) and Power BI Embedded (A1), the value of Fabric ends up being higher, because Fabric is a complete data platform with many services and resources, one of which is the Embedded capacity, while Power BI Embedded is just for that.

Can I use Power BI Pro or Premium per User for Embeddar?

Yes, it is possible to generate tokens to Embed reports in a Pro or Premium capacity per User, but depending on the official Microsoft documentation:

“Tokens embedded with Pro or Premium Per User License (PPU) are for development testing, so a Power BI Master or Service Principal account can only generate a limited number of tokens.

Acquire a capability for incorporation into a production environment. There is no limit to how many embedded tokens you can generate when purchasing a capacity.

In development testing, you can use free embedded trial tokens with a Pro license. To embed in a production environment, you must purchase a capability.”

Support materials

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So that's it, folks!
I hope you enjoyed this post and follow the series where I will explore all types of Power BI licensing!