In a workspace on Power BI Service, roles are assigned to each user to control what each user can do in the workspace. There are four roles available: Admin, Member, Contributor, and Viewer. 

 

What is a workspace?

In Power BI Service, workspaces are containers for the building blocks: dashboards, datasets, reports, workbooks, and dataflows. There are two types of workspaces: My workspace and workspaces. My workspace is the personal workspace for any Power BI customer to work with your own content and only you have access to My workspace. Workspaces are used to collaborate and share content with colleagues. You can also create, publish and manage apps in the workspace. In Workspaces, there are four roles available to manage who can do what in the workspace. 

 

Roles in workspace 

Between the four roles, an Admin holds the most power, then followed by Member, Contributor, and lastly Viewer.   Kemin mostly only has Admins and Members. Contributor has too little capabilities that Kemin decided not to use. Viewer is meant for people outside of the organization, but we no longer share our reports/dashboards with users outside of Kemin. The following table shows each role's capabilities. 

 

 

 

More details on each role: 

 

Admin 

  • Create, edit, delete, copy and publish reports and content in a worksapce
  • Publish, update, or share App in worksapce
  • Access, view, and interact with reports and dashboards in a workspace 
  • Configure and modify schedule data refreshes and gateway
  • Add or remove other users including other admins 

 

Member

  • Capable of all tasks that are associated with admins but can not add or remove users 
  • Can't delete the workspace 
  • Can add other users to the viewer or contributor role 

 

Contributor 

  • Can create, edit, delete, copy, and publish content and reports within a workspace
  • Cannot publish, update, or edit an app in workspace unless given this ability y admins or members 
  • Cannot add or remove users 
  • Capable of schedule refreshes and modify gateways 

 

Viewer

  • Read only access to workspace items 
  • Can interact with visualizations 
  • Does not require a Pro License to view reports if the worksapce is in Premium mode. 

 

 

Assigning roles 

Once on your workspace page, you can select Access to manage all user's roles for the workspace. 

 

 

Enter the user's email address, then assign a role in the drop-down menu right below "Enter email address". You will also see a list of people you share the workspace with.