Workspaces and Apps

A workspace is the collaborative container in the Power BI Service where datasets, reports, dashboards, and dataflows live before wider distribution; every workspace member is assigned one of four roles — Viewer, Contributor, Member, or Admin — each granting progressively more rights, from merely viewing content up to managing workspace access and settings. Unlike My Workspace, which is a personal sandbox visible only to its owner, standard (v2) workspaces are backed by a Microsoft 365 group, giving them a shared identity across Power BI, Teams, and SharePoint.

An App is a packaged, read-only distribution layer built on top of a workspace's content: workspace editors curate which dashboards and reports to include, arrange them into a navigation structure, and publish the App to a defined audience of viewers who never see the underlying workspace or its editing tools. This separation lets a team iterate freely inside the workspace — renaming pages, testing new visuals — without disrupting the polished experience consumers see, and updates only reach the App's audience when someone explicitly republishes it.

A workspace's license mode determines both storage and audience reach: a Pro workspace requires every viewer to hold a Power BI Pro license, while a workspace assigned to Premium or Fabric capacity lets any authenticated user in the organization view content with only a free license, alongside larger storage limits, paginated reports, and XMLA endpoint access. Moving a workspace onto capacity is an admin-level action and changes billing from a per-user model to a shared capacity cost.