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San Antonio Fabric and Power BI User Group

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San Antonio Fabric and Power BI User Group

5-Question Survey for Today’s Presentation

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Welcome Everyone!!

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Agenda

  • SA PUG Leaders
  • SA PUG Involvement
  • Fabric Updates
  • Power BI Updates
  • Sharing Smarter: Power BI Service Best Practices for Report Builders and End Use
  • Questions?
  • Closing Comments

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PUG Leaders

  • Chris Aleman
  • Antonio Ramsey
  • Lawrence Coffee
  • Rayan Yassminh
  • Jason Roelofs

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Join us!

SA PUG is growing, and we want you to be join us in our journey! Below are the different platforms we are apart of.

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About Us & Save the Date

Whether you're part of a team or flying solo, this session is for you!

Join us for a collaborative, guided deep dive into Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, and related technologies.�We learn from each other to grow faster-together.

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📅 Meetings: Last Wednesday of every month at 12 PM CST

  • Click here for Meetup info

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Community Impact

SA PUG communities' topics of interest:

    • Power BI
    • ✅ DAX
    • ✅ Data Viz
    • ✅ Fabric
    • ✅ Dashboard Design
    • Event Streams & Real Time Analytics
    • ✅ Data Modeling & Transformation
    • Data Factory – Flows & Pipelines
    • ✅ Case Studies or Demos
    • ☀️Administration & Governance

We are looking for future speakers to present!

Click here for the Volunteer Speaker Request Form

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Fabric Updates

Monthly Updates for Fabric

  • Click here for the video Summary by Microsoft

General

    • Desktop start-up performance improvements
    • Upgrade Power BI Desktop

Copilot and AI

    • Get a Copilot summary directly from your Teams message with a single click
    • Copilot in Power BI to write DAX queries in DAX query view updates
    • Improved language understanding for data questions
    • Ad hoc calculation support for data questions

Modeling

  • Use notebooks with your semantic model (Preview)
  • Access the Azure Analysis Services migration tool from your workspace

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Power BI Updates

Monthly Updates for PBI

  • Click here for the video Summary by Microsoft
  • Security labels for PBI desktop files
  • More visual Calculation updates
  • Sparklines are GA now
  • Org Apps are now available in Mobile
  • Network graph visual by Powerviz on App store
  • Chat with your data and Copilot in Embedded reports for portals and websites
    • Click here

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Sharing Smarter: Power BI Service Best Practices for Report Builders and End Use

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Sharing Smarter: Power BI Service

Session Takeaways:

    • Understand the differences between viewer, member, and contributor roles- and when to use each.
    • Learn best practices for organizing and publishing reports via apps, shared links, and workspaces.
    • Explore how to reduce confusion and improve user adoption by tailoring access and visibility.

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What are Workspaces?

Workspaces are places to collaborate with colleagues to create collections of dashboards, reports, semantic models, and paginated reports.

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What are Workspaces?

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What are Workspaces?

Workspaces features

  • Use granular workspace roles
  • Contact list
  • Create template apps
  • Share semantic models

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Roles in Workspaces

  • Roles let you manage who can do what in a workspace, so teams can collaborate.

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  • Workspaces allow you to assign roles to individuals, and also to user groups such as security groups, Microsoft 365 groups, and distribution lists.

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Roles in Workspaces

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Roles in Workspaces

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Sharing Content in Power BI

Ways to share:

  • Links, Apps, Teams, Direct Access
  • Internal or external
  • Embed, print, subscriptions, .pbix file, PowerPoint

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Real World Scenario

From Sharing to Struggling: Lessons Learned

    • Initially shared reports via workspaces and direct links
    • Assumed users would easily navigate and access content
      • Frequent feedback:
      • "I can't find the report“
      • "Where do I go?“
      • "Is this the right version?“

Key Realization:

  • Just publishing content isn’t enough-structure, clarity, and user-focused design are essential

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Our End Users Struggled

Guiding question:

    • How do we provide easy access while maintaining governance?
    • Challenges

Too steep of a learning curve for our end users

    • Too difficult to find reports
    • Navigating PBI service was challenging for non computer literate folks
    • Low adoption rate

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Avoiding Early Pitfalls

Key mistakes made during initial rollout:

    • Didn’t follow Microsoft documentation
    • Gave coop access to workspaces
    • Didn’t use apps
    • Permission groups not fully dynamic
    • Relied on consultants to guide us- they were learning too!

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Avoiding Early Pitfalls

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Used Workspaces incorrectly

Collaborative dev environment for:

    • Dashboards, reports, semantic models
    • Not for end-user consumption-developers only

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Designing for Clarity

Our Mistakes

    • Coop had direct access to workspaces
    • Too much noise, hard to navigate
    • Confusion during Tableau to PBI transition

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Designing for Clarity

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Designing for Clarity

Solution

    • Created apps for report consumers
    • Cleaner interface, easier navigation
    • Had to rebuild bookmarks/subscriptions

Apps offer:

    • Customization
    • Separation between dev and end-user layers
    • Workspace access limited strictly to report devs via Entra ID groups

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Designing for Clarity

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Designing for Clarity

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Designing for Clarity

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Permissioning for Security and Usability

Our Mistake

    • Security groups too broadand not dynamic
    • Created manual viewer groups (e.g., individual accountants)
    • Result: messy, cluttered group structure

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Permissioning for Security and Usability

Our Solution

    • Rebuilt groups from scratch using job roles
    • Now fully dynamic groups with:
      • Less overhead
      • Easier updates when job roles change
      • Inherited access for new hires

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Designing for Clarity

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Designing for Clarity

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Grouping and Role Based Strategy

  • One overall viewer group buckets all dynamic groups
  • Additional smaller dynamic groups:
    • Executive leadership
    • Admin roles
  • Ongoing addition of dynamic groups as coop usage grows

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Designing for Clarity

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Final Thoughts

Power BI success requires:

    • Governance clarity
    • Role-based access
    • End-user centric design

Our lessons = smoother experience for developers and business users alike

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Additional Resources

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Questions?

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Thank you and we’ll see you next month!