Organizing your workspace can help to organize your mind, too. 'This is especially true of standing desks, which have their own cables, and they are a distraction to your work,' Lee says. Hang a decorative pin board over your workspace to keep papers and mementos tidy while in clear view. Scatter a few pictures, postcards, or love notes to remind you what really matters while you work.
-->Workspaces are places to collaborate with colleagues on specific content. Workspaces are created by Power BI designers to hold collections of dashboards and reports. The designer can then share the workspace with colleagues. Designers can also bundle a collection of dashboards and reports into an app and distribute it to the entire community, to their organization, or to specific people or groups. Certain types of apps, called template apps, create a workspace when the app is installed. Learn more about apps.
Everyone using the Power BI service also has a My workspace. My workspace is your personal sandbox where you can create content for yourself.
You can see your workspaces in Power BI Home or by selecting Workspaces from your navigation pane.
Types of workspaces
My Workspace stores all the content that you own and create. Think of it as your personal sandbox or work area for your own content. For many Power BI business users, My workspace remains empty because your job doesn't involve creating new content. Business users, by definition, consume data created by others and use that data to make business decisions. If you find that you are creating content, consider reading the Power BI articles for designers instead.
Workspaces contain all the content for a specific app. When a designer creates an app, they bundle together all the content that is necessary for that app to be utilized. Content may include dashboards, reports, and datasets. Not every app will contain these three pieces of content. An app may contain only one dashboard, or three of each content type, or even twenty reports. It all depends on what the designer includes in the app. Commonly, app workspaces shared with business users don't include the datasets.
The Fig sales workspace below contains three reports and one dashboard.
Permissions in the workspaces
Access permissions determine what you can do in a workspace, so teams can collaborate. When granting access to a new workspace, designers add individuals or groups to one of the workspace roles: Viewer, Member, Contributor, or Admin.
As a Power BI business user, you'll typically interact in workspaces using the Viewer role. But a designer could also assign you to the Member or Contributor role. The Viewer role lets you view and interact with content (dashboards, reports, apps) created by others and shared with you. And because the Viewer role can't access the underlying dataset, it's a safe way to interact with content and not have to worry that you'll 'hurt' the underlying data.
For a detailed list of what you can do as a business user with the Viewer role, see Power BI features for business users.
Workspace permissions and roles
Here are the capabilities of the four roles: Admins, Members, Contributors, and Viewers. All of these capabilities, except view and interact with an item, require a Power BI Pro license.
| Capability | Admin | Member | Contributor | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Update and delete the workspace. | ||||
| Add/remove people, including other admins. | ||||
| Allow Contributors to update the app for the workspace | ||||
| Add members or others with lower permissions. | ||||
| Publish, unpublish, and change permissions for an app | ||||
| Update an app. | If allowed 1 | |||
| Share an item or share an app.2 | ||||
| Allow others to reshare items.2 | ||||
| Feature apps on colleagues' Home | ||||
| Manage dataset permissions.3 | ||||
| Feature dashboards and reports on colleagues' Home | ||||
| Create, edit, and delete content in the workspace. | ||||
| Publish reports to the workspace, delete content. | ||||
| Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace.2 | ||||
| Copy a report.3 | ||||
| Schedule data refreshes via the on-premises gateway.4 | ||||
| Modify gateway connection settings.4 | ||||
| View and interact with an item.5 | ||||
| Read data stored in workspace dataflows |
1 Contributors can update the app associated with the workspace, if the workspace Admin delegates this permission to them. Fastcomputer 1 3 – accelerate and optimize your mac. However, they can't publish a new app or change who has permission to it.
2 Contributors and Viewers can also share items in a workspace if they have Reshare permissions.
As a Power BI business user, you'll typically interact in workspaces using the Viewer role. But a designer could also assign you to the Member or Contributor role. The Viewer role lets you view and interact with content (dashboards, reports, apps) created by others and shared with you. And because the Viewer role can't access the underlying dataset, it's a safe way to interact with content and not have to worry that you'll 'hurt' the underlying data.
For a detailed list of what you can do as a business user with the Viewer role, see Power BI features for business users.
Workspace permissions and roles
Here are the capabilities of the four roles: Admins, Members, Contributors, and Viewers. All of these capabilities, except view and interact with an item, require a Power BI Pro license.
| Capability | Admin | Member | Contributor | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Update and delete the workspace. | ||||
| Add/remove people, including other admins. | ||||
| Allow Contributors to update the app for the workspace | ||||
| Add members or others with lower permissions. | ||||
| Publish, unpublish, and change permissions for an app | ||||
| Update an app. | If allowed 1 | |||
| Share an item or share an app.2 | ||||
| Allow others to reshare items.2 | ||||
| Feature apps on colleagues' Home | ||||
| Manage dataset permissions.3 | ||||
| Feature dashboards and reports on colleagues' Home | ||||
| Create, edit, and delete content in the workspace. | ||||
| Publish reports to the workspace, delete content. | ||||
| Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace.2 | ||||
| Copy a report.3 | ||||
| Schedule data refreshes via the on-premises gateway.4 | ||||
| Modify gateway connection settings.4 | ||||
| View and interact with an item.5 | ||||
| Read data stored in workspace dataflows |
1 Contributors can update the app associated with the workspace, if the workspace Admin delegates this permission to them. Fastcomputer 1 3 – accelerate and optimize your mac. However, they can't publish a new app or change who has permission to it.
2 Contributors and Viewers can also share items in a workspace if they have Reshare permissions.
3 To copy a report, and to create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace, you need Build permission for the dataset. For datasets in this workspace, the people with Admin, Member, and Contributor roles automatically have Build permission through their workspace role.
4 Keep in mind that you also need permissions on the gateway. Those permissions are managed elsewhere, independent of workspace roles and permissions. See Manage an on-premises gateway for details.
5 Even if you don't have a Power BI Pro license, you can view and interact with items in the Power BI service if the items are in a workspace in a Premium capacity.
Licensing, workspaces, and capacity
Licensing also plays a part in determining what you can and can't do in a workspace. Many features require the user to have a Power BI Pro license or for the workspace to be stored in Premium capacity.
Often, business users work with a free license. Learn more about licensing. If the content isn't stored in Premium capacity, the business user won't have access.
If the workspace is stored in Premium capacity, business users will be able to view and interact with the content in that workspace. A diamond icon identifies the workspaces that are stored in Premium capacity.
To learn more, see Which license do I have?.
Design Your Workspace
Next steps
How To Organize Your Workspace
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