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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Office 365 - Accessing Power BI Administration - Issue and Fixes

Power BI is a very useful and feature rich Business Intelligence tool in Office 365.
Some of the configuration tasks require admin to log into Admin Portal.
Example: Setting up a Gateway / Data Sources.
What is a Gateway (from Power BI Admin Portal):
A gateway is used to connect to a data source in your corporate environment. You must have at least one gateway installed in your corporate environment before creating a data source.

Even if you are a Global Admin on Office 365 and you have access to Power BI portal, which means you have a license for Power BI,  you may not have access to Power BI Admin Portal which is fine because not everyone in the company would have that role.

However if you need to access Power BI Admin and it does not work: There are 2 reasons / solutions which are explained below.
Screenshot 1)
On clicking Power BI link as shown below you may get the following error:
Screenshot 2)
                                                                    OR

You may not see the Power BI link at all  (highlighted in yellow color in screenshot 1 above)

The Issue above is that Power BI Admin access needs the second option in Power BI License to be checked as shown below.
 Screenshot 3)

The above license screen is Admin --> Users --> Active Users --> (search for Name of the person) --> Click on check box before person name -->  (Use one of the 2 options below)
i.e.
click "Edit" -->  click "Licenses"
        OR 
Assigned License --> click "Edit"

Once the above check box  i.e. Microsoft Power BI Reporting and Analytics Plan 1 is checked   (Screenshot 3 ) --> refresh the web page and now we should see Power BI link in Admin section of Admin portal. So far so good.

Now if we click on Power BI link you will reach the Power BI Admin screen which is at

https://<domain name here>.admin.powerbi.com/?language=en-US
If this worked you can skip the step below. However for your knowledge please continue reading...

If you still can not access Power BI Admin here is another cause and solution:

--> One of the Office 365 Admin in the company would have access to Power BI Admin.
Powershell can be used to find a list of Office 365 Admins.
Administrator need to go from their login and assign the role from the Role Management section as shown below in screenshot 4.

Screenshot 4)

After the login has been assigned the administrator role from the above screen (Screenshot 4), Power BI admin should work.

My suggestion to Microsoft would be: Instead of user looking for reasons why Admin is not working -

a) Power BI Admin link should always be shown to the Global Admin if the Global Admin has been assigned  a Power BI License
b) On clicking the admin link it should:
     b1) Ask the user to check "Microsoft Power BI Reporting and Analytics Plan 1" (Screenshot 3) -  if that is not already checked.
     b2) Show a read only list of current Power BI admins so that they can be contacted to assign the role as shown above.

Well that is it and hopefully these management things will improve since Microsoft updates Office 365 regularly.

Until next time...

Chao
Mohan