Power BI Guest User Sign in to other Tenants

Owned by Joni Girardi
Last updated: Apr 22, 2024

Adding external Emails as Guest Users on a PBI Tenant

The owner of a Tenant can add external guest users to their Power BI tenant. The owner must have rights to add users to their Azure Entra ID and Power BI Service:

  • Go to Azure Portal: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/azure-portal

  • Sign in (top right) → Microsoft Entra ID (search for it or use the left menu) → Users → click dropdown on New user → Invite external users. Follow the steps to invite the guest user.

  • The guest users will receive the invites. Ask them to accept the invite.

  • Go to the Power BI Service → select a Workspace to grant guest users access to → Manage access → Add people or groups → enter the guest user’s email → set their rights to Admin (Member or Contributor might be enough in the long run) → Add.

Power BI Desktop

Sign in with Power BI Desktop Pro to a Power BI Tenant as a guest user:

  • You’ll need to know the Tenant’s domain (which is usually the Tenant’s owner’s domain from their email address, e.g., owner’s email joe@dev.dataself.com, the domain is dev.dataself.com. FYI: this is the same as the Domain column on Azure's Directories + subscriptions page.

  • Open Power BI Desktop.

  • You’ll have to sign in to your default Power BI Tenant first. Click Sign in on the top right and follow the prompts.

  • Sign out by clicking your name on the top right → Sign out.

  • Sign in (top right) again, enter your email → Continue → Sign-in options → click Sign in to an organization → enter the domain name of the other organization (e.g., dev.dataself.com) → Next → click your email account.

  • You should now be signed in to that tenant. You can now open a pbix file and publish it as a guest user to the tenant.

Power BI Service

Here are the instructions to sign in to the Power BI Service as a guest user:

  • Only required for the first sign in:

    • An owner of the Tenant must give guest users their Tenant URL to sign in: Ask the other to sign it to their PBI Service → click ? (top right) → About Power BI → click the Tenant URL (shown on the picture below) → copy the URL and send it to the guest user(s) → ask guest users to bookmark this URL on their web browsers. FYI: the ctid from the Tenant URL is the same ID as the Directory ID column on Azure's Directories + subscriptions page.

image-20240421-182546.png

  • For ongoing sign-in: Open the provided URL and sign in with your email (guest user).