Now with the announcement of Power BI Apps by Microsoft, Power BI designers can produce officially packaged content and then make it available as an app for download by a larger audience. Microsoft is one of the top Tools used by both Data and Business analysts out there, with the inclusion of apps you have rights that are distinct from those specified on the workspace, designers can more easily manage permissions on these collections by utilizing an app.

Requirement

To follow along with this article, you should have a basic understanding of Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, and how to create a workspace in Power BI services.

Nevertheless, this article will guide you through all the processes.

What is Power BI App?

Power BI Apps are developed in workspaces where team members can work together on a Power BI report or dashboard before distributing the finished product to a single user, sizable groups of users, or the entire enterprise.

Licensing for Power BI Apps

The variety of features that users have access to in the Power BI Service depends on their license.
Power BI Licensing affects these major factors:

• The working method.
• Location to keep records and reports.
• Opportunity to work together on reports.

The created app must be shared with the recipient in a unique category of cloud storage called Premium capacity, or the recipient must have a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license.

Advantages of Power BI Apps

• Apps are an easy way for designers to distribute multiple contents at one time.
• Allows designers to create dashboards and reports, then bundle them together into a single app.
• The frequency of data refresh can be set by the author. The user is informed of the author’s modifications or can view them directly on the interface.
• Enables the author to define limitations and permissions for particular report sections. Users can currently access only a portion of the report that the author intends for them to read.
• Great for deployment purposes, as the report is usually separate from the development team workspace. In this case, it can be distributed to a wider audience.

Power BI Apps Vs Power BI Workspace

Let’s talk about the difference between Power BI Apps and Workspace, what are their merit, and the demerit of applying them.

Create & Publish a Power BI App

Power BI apps give users access to company dashboards from anywhere in the world and allow them to engage with them. The user can now view real-time data from both on-premise and on-cloud sources.

We are going to start from the basics, by firstly creating a Workspace in Power BI Service and Publishing our report from Power BI Desktop, and lastly, creating a Power BI Apps from our workspace.

Create App

Workspaces are locations where colleagues can work together on specialized content. Power BI designers establish workspaces to house groups of dashboards and reports. 

For you to create a workspace in Power BI services you will be needing the following “Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license or for the workspace to be stored in Premium capacity”. 

Step 1: Power BI Service

Go to your browser and type https://app.powerbi.com/home, this would take you to the Power BI service. If your organization has a Microsoft Office 365 account this should open easily else you will need to create a Microsoft developer account.

Step 2: Create a Workspace

In Power BI Service you have two options to work with Workspaces, you can either create a workspace or my workspace

• My Workspace: Your own default workspace is My Workspace. It is the place where the material will always belong to you alone. It can be used to share stuff, but not for company-wide sharing.
• Workspaces: A workspace is an environment where several people share and work together. A workspace can contain numerous Power BI content items.

To create a workspace click on the “workspace” icon at the bottom left of your Power BI Service home page.

You must give a new workspace a name when you create it. When people join this workspace, they will see it by the name of the workspace.

You can define a group to be either private or public. All members of your organization will be allowed to participate in public. Private refers to the group of users you add to this workspace.

Additionally, you can decide whether to grant users Read-only or Edit access. A member will automatically have edit access if they are an administrator.

After you are done with the setting click “Save”, and you will notice a new workspace has been created with the name you gave.

Step 3: Publish Report from Power BI Desktop

Now open the report you want to publish on your Power BI Desktop, click on the “Home” ribbon, then go to “publish”.Scroll to the Workspace you want to Publish your report.
Note: Always verify that you are publishing to the right workspace.

Step 4: Create Apps from Workspace

Now that we have successfully published our report from Power BI Desktop, Let’s now create an App. You can also create a Dashboard from your Power BI report if you want to.
Click on Create App at the top right corner of the workspace, this will open another window.

Step 5: App setting and Configuration

• Setup: 

This contains the App name, description, App theme color, and Contact information.

• Content:

Click on the Add Content button, then select the content you want to be displayed on your App.

• Audience:

This is used to determine the type of audience that can view your App. You can set it to either “Entire Organization or Specific user group”. You can also check the Advance option.
–  Allow people to share the datasets in this app audience.

–  Allow people to build content with the datasets in this app audience.

Click Publish App when you are done with all settings.

Now you can explore the Power BI App feature to know more about your app.

Get More Apps

Power BI also provides you with already existing apps on their service.

On the left side, select Apps>> Get apps in Power BI app navigation, and you can see all the Apps available on the Power BI Service.

Conclusion

In this blog, we learned how to create a workspace in the Power BI service, publish a report from the Power BI desktop to the web and also create a Power BI app. Apps have more functionalities than Power BI workspaces do. Additionally, it gives the designers a simple way to distinguish between completed and published reports.

To learn more about Power BI, you should sign up for our classes, keep up with the blog, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.