Since a couple of weeks, we launched shared Power BI Datasets for our end users. Which allows them to analyze data in an easier way. Depending on their requirements and preferences, they can easily start to analyze data in Excel or create a Power BI report in the Power BI service.
After the end user completes their analysis, they save the newly created Power BI report in their Personal workspace for future reference. Or they save the Excel-file on a preferred location.
Problem Statement
The end user can save a Power BI report created in the Power BI Service in their own Personal Workspace but then they have no way to share it with their team. It remains a personal report/analysis.
When executing the analysis in Excel, they can distribute the Excel-file as they see fit.
The pitfall of personal workspaces in Power BI, from my point of view, is that if someone leaves the company, there isn’t a straight forward way for other end users to take-over previously created analysis.
This is where the Power BI Administrator can be of importance.
Solution
As a Power BI Administrator. You have the power/opportunity to takeover a personal workspace. As soon as you do, you can access the created reports in the personal workspace.
In this example, someone named Alex Wilber decided to leave the company. This person reported on a weekly basis the facts and figures of Freight & Sales to the management team. Since there was not a standardized report, Alex created a report in his Personal Workspace in the Power BI Service.
Since the company wants to share this report and use it as a Standardized report, the Power BI Administrator needs to takeover the personal workspace to get the report.
As a first step, the Power BI Administrator signs in into the Power BI Service. When navigating, the Administrator currently can see the workspaces as shown in the screenshot below.
As you can see, the Power BI Administrator currently can’t see Alex Wilber personal workspace. Luckily there is a possibility to takeover a workspace in the Admin Portal. To get there, the Administrator navigates to the Settings icon in the top right corner and clicks the icon.
As a next step, the Admin navigates to the Governance and insights section and chooses Admin portal.
In the Admin portal, the Admin searches for Workspaces to get to the workspaces overview.
In this overview, the Power BI Administrator can see all the existing workspaces in the Power BI Portal.
To continue the Power BI Administrator searches for the Personal Workspace of Alex Wilber. Personal workspaces are identifiable by the Personal Group type as you can see in the screenshot below.
Now that the Power BI Administrator has identified the Personal Workspace, the admin can go to more setting by using the 3 dots next to the workspace name.
By doing this, the admin can choose the Get Access property.
After confirming, the Power BI Administrator can navigate to the Workspaces section to access the Personal Workspace.
As soon as this is done, the Admin can open the report and choose to save it in another workspace. In this case the Admin is saving the report in the Corporate Reporting Workspaces. Which is a shared workspace.
