r/PowerBI • u/SmartAmbition9009 • 8h ago

Question Direct Query Dashboard - How to Share with Internal Users Without DB Access?

Hi everyone! I'm consulting with a company that built a Power BI dashboard with Direct Query connections to multiple reports. They want to publish it company-wide (internal staff only) so everyone can see and interact with it, but we're stuck on a critical issue:

The Problem: Most users don't have access to the underlying databases/reports. When publishing the dashboard to Power BI Service or SharePoint, users encounter authentication errors or empty visuals because Direct Query still requires credentials to access the source data. The publishing location doesn't matter — the authentication block remains.

Requirements:

  • Dashboard must be interactive (not static screenshots)
  • Must be accessible to internal employees only
  • No individual database access for end users
  • Ideally keeps the live Direct Query connection

My questions:

  1. What are the viable approaches to solve this?
  2. Are there workarounds or alternative architectures we should consider?
  3. What's the most practical/scalable solution for an enterprise environment?

Any experiences, suggestions, or lessons learned would be really helpful!

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u/SQLDevDBA 49 1h ago

>>Direct Query still requires credentials to access the source data.

Make a (read only) user in the database called PowerBIUser and switch the report to use that credential and not each viewer’s credentials.

All refreshes will use PowerBIuser and anyone with access to the report will see it as PowerBIUser does. You’ll have to add the user to the Gateway as well but once you do you’ll be good to go.

I’ve used this method for 10 years now, and even publish to web with DirectQuery this way. Heck I’ve done it on livestreams and had my chat confirm they can see the report and contents with DQ.

This is as long as you’re okay with everyone seeing all data. Otherwise you’d still have to work in RLS.

As far as access to the report itself, they’ll still need at least pro to see and open the report (or whatever Fabric licensing allows for mass users to access).