How to Use Power BI Service: End-to-End Guide from Login to Published Report

Every step between “I built a report on my laptop” and “my whole team uses it every morning”: licences, signing in, workspaces, publishing from Desktop, scheduled refresh, dashboards, sharing, security and automation.

The flow: Licence → Sign in → Workspace → Build in Desktop → Publish → Refresh → Dashboard → Share → Secure & monitor

The whole journey: build on your PC, publish once, and the Service keeps the data fresh and delivers it to people.

Step 0: Desktop and Service do different jobs

Power BI comes in two main parts. Power BI Desktop is the free Windows application where you connect to data, clean it with Power Query, build the model, write DAX and design report pages. Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com, now part of Microsoft Fabric) is the cloud website where reports live after you publish them. The Service is where data refreshes on a schedule, where people view and interact with reports, and where you control who sees what.

Task	Desktop	Service
Connect to and transform data (Power Query)	Yes, full	Limited (dataflows)
Data model, relationships, DAX	Yes, full	Yes (web modelling), lighter
Design report pages	Yes	Yes (edit mode)
Scheduled refresh	No	Yes
Share with colleagues, apps	No	Yes
Dashboards, alerts, subscriptions	No	Yes
Assign row-level security members	Define roles only	Yes

The usual workflow is: build in Desktop, publish to the Service, and manage everything after that in the Service.

Step 1: Understand the licence you need

Licences decide what you can do in the Service, so check this first. Both the person sharing and the person viewing need the right licence.

Licence	What it allows	Good for
Free	Publish to My workspace and view your own content. Cannot share or collaborate.	Learning and personal use
Pro (per user)	Shared workspaces, sharing, apps, subscriptions. Up to 8 scheduled refreshes a day, 1 GB model size. Viewers also need Pro.	Most small and mid-size teams
Premium Per User (PPU)	Everything in Pro plus 48 refreshes a day, larger models, deployment pipelines, paginated reports. Viewers need PPU too.	Analysts needing advanced features
Fabric capacity (F SKU)	Organisation-wide capacity. From F64 upward, users with a free licence can view content in that capacity. Creators still need Pro or PPU.	Large audiences, enterprises

Tip: new users can start a 60-day Pro trial from inside the Service (the trial prompt appears when you first try a Pro feature, such as creating a workspace). Prices and SKU names change, so confirm current details on Microsoft’s Power BI pricing page.

Step 2: Sign in to Power BI Service

Power BI uses Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) accounts. You need a work or school email. Personal addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com are not accepted for sign-up.

First-time sign-up

Go to https://app.powerbi.com in Edge or Chrome.
Enter your work email and select Submit. If your organisation already uses Microsoft 365, you will be sent to your company sign-in page.
Enter your password and complete multi-factor authentication if your organisation requires it.
If this is your first visit, Power BI may ask for your country and a phone number, then assigns you a free licence automatically (if your admin allows self-service sign-up).
You land on the Home page. Your licence type appears under your profile picture (top right) → View account.

Sign in to Desktop with the same account

Open Power BI Desktop (install it free from the Microsoft Store so it updates automatically).
Select Sign in at the top right and use the same work account.
Signing in links Desktop to your Service tenant, which the Publish button needs.

Common blocker: “Your organisation has disabled self-service sign-up” means an admin must assign you a licence in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. Learners without a work account can get a sandbox tenant through the Microsoft 365 Developer Program, if they qualify.

Step 3: Find your way around the Service

The left navigation pane is your map. Labels shift slightly as Microsoft updates Fabric, but the main areas are stable:

Simplified Service layout: navigation on the left, search and settings on top, your content in the middle.

Home: recent and favourite items, recommended content and quick-start options.
Create: start a report from a file or pasted data, or create other Fabric items.
Browse: recent items, favourites and everything shared with you.
OneLake catalog (previously Data hub): all the semantic models and data items you can use, with endorsement badges (Promoted, Certified).
Apps: packaged collections of reports and dashboards that colleagues have published for you.
Workspaces: the containers where content lives. My workspace is your private one.
Metrics: scorecards for tracking goals against targets.
Settings (gear icon, top right): manage personal storage, gateways, and the admin portal (admins only).

If your tenant has Fabric enabled, a switcher at the bottom-left moves between the Power BI and Fabric experiences. For reporting work, stay in Power BI.

Step 4: Create a workspace for the team

Never use My workspace for team content: nobody else can see it, and it disappears with your account. Create a shared workspace instead (needs Pro, PPU or a capacity).

Select Workspaces → + New workspace.
Name it clearly, for example Sales Analytics. Add a description and an image if you like.
Under Advanced, choose the licence mode (Pro, Premium per user or Fabric capacity) and set a contact list.
Select Apply. The workspace opens, empty.
Select Manage access → + Add people or groups and give each person a role.

Role	Can do	Give it to
Admin	Everything, including deleting the workspace and managing access	1–2 owners
Member	Publish, edit, share content, add Contributors and Viewers, publish apps	Lead analysts
Contributor	Publish and edit content, set refresh; cannot share or manage access	Report developers
Viewer	View and interact only	Business users (prefer an app instead)

Best practice: assign roles to Microsoft 365 or security groups rather than individuals. When someone joins or leaves the team, you update the group once.

Step 5: Build the report in Power BI Desktop

This guide follows on from our Top 50 DAX Functions post and uses the same sample sales data (Sales, Products, Customers, Targets). Any data source works the same way.

Get data: Home → Get data. Choose your source. For easy refresh later, keep files in SharePoint or OneDrive for work and connect with the SharePoint folder connector, not a path on your laptop.
Transform: select Transform data to open Power Query. Set data types, remove unneeded columns, rename steps. Then Close & Apply.
Model: in Model view, create relationships (Sales → Products, Sales → Customers, Sales → Calendar). Build a Calendar table and mark it as a date table.
Measures: write measures such as Total Sales, Profit Margin %, Sales YTD and YoY Growth %.
Visuals: design pages: KPI cards at the top, a trend line by month, a bar chart by category, a map or matrix by region, and slicers for Year and Region.
Polish: apply a theme (View → Themes), add page titles, set tooltips, and hide technical columns from report view.
Save as Sales Performance.pbix. The file name becomes the report and semantic model name in the Service.

Step 6: Publish from Desktop to the Service

In Desktop, save the file, then select Home → Publish.
Pick the destination workspace (for example Sales Analytics) and select Select.
Wait for “Success!”. Select Open ‘Sales Performance.pbix’ in Power BI.

One click on Publish turns your .pbix into two items in the chosen workspace.

Publishing creates two items in the workspace:

Report: the pages and visuals people look at.
Semantic model (formerly called a dataset): the data, relationships and measures. Refresh, security and permissions are all set here.

To update the report later, publish the same file name to the same workspace again and choose Replace. The links, sharing and refresh settings are kept.

Size limits: a .pbix up to 1 GB can be published on Pro. Larger models need PPU or a capacity, with large semantic model storage format turned on.

Step 7: Keep the data fresh with scheduled refresh

A published report shows the data as it was when you published. To keep it current, configure the semantic model.

Decide whether you need a gateway

Cloud sources (SharePoint, OneDrive, Azure SQL, Dataverse, most SaaS connectors): no gateway needed.
On-premises sources (files on a local or network drive, SQL Server in your office): you need the on-premises data gateway installed on an always-on machine. Use standard mode for teams; personal mode works only for you.

Cloud sources connect directly. Anything inside your office network needs the on-premises data gateway.

Configure the refresh

In the workspace, hover over the semantic model → ⋯ → Settings.
Open Gateway and cloud connections. Map each source to a gateway connection if it is on-premises.
Open Data source credentials → Edit credentials. Choose the authentication method (OAuth2 for SharePoint, Basic or Windows for databases) and the privacy level, then Sign in.
Open Refresh, switch Configure a refresh schedule on, choose daily or weekly, set the time zone and add times (up to 8 a day on Pro, 48 on PPU/capacity).
Tick Send refresh failure notifications to yourself and the model owner. Select Apply.
Test it: ⋯ → Refresh now, then check Refresh history.

Watch out: scheduled refresh is paused automatically after four consecutive failures, and after two months with no one visiting the report. Fix the cause, then turn the schedule back on.

Step 8: Build a dashboard (optional)

A report has multiple interactive pages built from one semantic model. A dashboard is a single page of pinned tiles that can come from several reports, plus data alerts. Many teams now use well-designed reports or apps instead, but dashboards still suit a one-page executive summary.

Open the report in the Service. Hover over a visual and select the pin icon.
Choose New dashboard, name it Sales Executive View, then Pin.
Pin more visuals to the existing dashboard. To pin a whole page as one live tile, use ⋯ → Pin to a dashboard from the report toolbar.
Open the dashboard, rearrange and resize tiles, and use Edit → Add a tile for text, images or web content.
Selecting a tile takes users to the report page it came from.

Step 9: Share the report with your audience

There are four main ways to share. Choose by audience size and how much control you need.

Four ways out of a workspace. Apps scale best; Publish to web makes data public.

Method	How	Best for
Direct share	Open the report → Share → enter names or a group → set whether they can reshare or build content → Send. You can also copy a link.	A few people, quick sharing
Workspace access	Manage access → add as Viewer	People who need to see everything in the workspace
App (recommended)	Workspace → Create app → choose content, navigation and audiences → Publish app	Departments and large audiences; a clean, read-only package
Embed in Teams / SharePoint	Teams: add a Power BI tab. SharePoint: Power BI web part with the report link. Permissions still apply.	Putting reports where people already work

Publishing an app, step by step

In the workspace, select Create app.
Setup: give the app a name, description, logo and theme colour.
Content: add the reports and dashboards, order them, and add section headers or links.
Audience: create one or more audiences (for example “Regional managers” and “Leadership”) and choose which content each sees.
Select Publish app. Share the app link or let users find it under Apps. After later changes, select Update app.

Never use “Publish to web” for company data. It creates a public link that anyone on the internet can open without signing in, and search engines can index it. Use it only for genuinely public data, and only if your admin has enabled it.

Step 10: Control who sees which rows (row-level security)

Row-level security (RLS) lets one report show each user only their own data, for example each regional manager sees only their region.

One report, one model, different numbers per person. Figures are 2025 regional sales from the sample dataset.

In Desktop: define roles

Modeling → Manage roles → New. Name the role North Region.
Choose the Customers table and add the filter [Region] = "North". Repeat for other regions.
For a single dynamic role, use the DAX filter [ManagerEmail] = USERPRINCIPALNAME() on a table that maps users to regions.
Test with Modeling → View as, then publish.

In the Service: assign people

Semantic model ⋯ → Security.
Select a role and add users or groups → Add → Save.
Use Test as role to check what they will see.

Important: RLS applies only to Viewers. Workspace Admins, Members and Contributors see all data, so give business users Viewer or app access.

Step 11: Automate: subscriptions and data alerts

Email subscriptions

Open the report → Subscribe to report → Create a subscription.
Choose a standard subscription (snapshot image and link) or attach the full report as PDF or PowerPoint.
Add recipients, pick the page, and set the schedule (daily, weekly, or after each data refresh).
Save. Recipients need access to the report.

Data alerts

On a dashboard, open the ⋯ menu of a card, KPI or gauge tile → Manage alerts.
+ Add alert rule: for example “Total Sales below ₹10,00,000”, checked at most once a day.
Alerts arrive by email and in the notification centre. For more complex logic, use Set alert on report visuals (Fabric Activator) or Power Automate.

Step 12: Export, analyse in Excel and go mobile

PDF or PowerPoint: Export → PDF or PowerPoint (as image or as live embedded report).
Data from a visual: hover over the visual → ⋯ → Export data to CSV or Excel. Admins can restrict this.
Analyze in Excel: Export → Analyze in Excel opens a live PivotTable connected to the semantic model, so Excel users reuse your measures instead of rebuilding them.
Mobile: install the Power BI app on iOS or Android and sign in with the same account. In Desktop, View → Mobile layout lets you design a phone-friendly version of each page.

Step 13: Manage updates and monitor usage

Version control: keep the master .pbix in SharePoint or OneDrive (version history), or save as a Power BI Project (.pbip) and use Git integration with your workspace.
Deployment pipelines (PPU or capacity): create Development, Test and Production workspaces, publish to Dev, then Deploy to Test and Production. Deployment rules can switch data sources per stage.
Endorsement: semantic model Settings → Endorsement → Promoted (or Certified if your admin allows you) so others build on the trusted model.
Usage metrics: open the report → ⋯ → Open usage metrics to see views, viewers and the most-used pages.
Lineage view: in the workspace, switch to Lineage to see how sources, semantic models, reports and dashboards connect, which helps before changing anything.

Step 14: Troubleshooting common problems

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Can’t sign up with Gmail	Personal emails are not supported	Use a work or school account
Publish button greyed out or asks to sign in	Desktop not signed in, or different account	Sign in to Desktop with the same work account
Can’t create a workspace	Free licence	Start a Pro trial or ask your admin for a licence
Colleague sees “You need a Power BI Pro licence”	Viewer has a free licence and content is not on F64+ capacity	Give them Pro, or move the workspace to capacity
Refresh fails: “credentials invalid”	Password changed or OAuth token expired	Semantic model settings → Data source credentials → sign in again
Refresh fails: “no gateway”	Source is a local file or on-premises database	Install and configure the on-premises data gateway, or move files to SharePoint
User sees all regions despite RLS	User is Admin, Member or Contributor	Give them Viewer or app access instead
Changes not showing after republish	Published to a different workspace or file name	Publish the same file name to the same workspace and choose Replace; update the app

Quick checklist before you announce a report

Published to a shared workspace, not My workspace.
Credentials set and scheduled refresh tested, with failure emails on.
RLS roles assigned and tested with Test as role.
App published with the right audiences, and viewers have the right licence.
Semantic model endorsed, and the report has a clear title and a “last refreshed” date.