Power BI - Difference between Publish to Web and Website (Portal)

Question

I want to know the difference in the following 2 options in Power BI Service -> File -> Embed Report:

• Website or Portal
• Publish to Web (public)

My observation was that you can use Report Filters in Website or Portal option but Report Filters are disabled in Publish to Web option.

Can someone please answer my following queries:

1. When should we use each of the 2 options?
2. Which option needs Power BI Embedded Tokens and Capacity to use in production environment?
3. Can users use Filtering on the report in both the 2 options?

Thanks! Gagan

Answer 1

Please find the answer below:

1.Difference between Publish to Web and Publish to Website

Publish to Web:

• Report will be public

• No need to Login (Anyone with the link can view the report)

• With the Power BI Publish to web option :

  a. You can easily embed interactive Power BI content in blog posts, websites, emails, or social media.

  b. You can also easily edit, update, refresh or stop sharing your published visuals.

Publish to Website:

• Report will be private

• Need to Login first (Unauthorized personal can’t be able to view the report)

• With the Power BI Publish to website option :

  a. User who has access to that workspace can see the report.

  b. User who is member of your organization can see report from that workspace.

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2.You don't need the Tokens and Capacity to publish the reports to web or website.

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3.Filtering with Publish to Website and Publish to Web

• With Publish to Website you can use filtering.

• With Publish to Web to use the filtering on the report, you need to have the Power BI Pro License.

Answer 2

Publish to web does not allow display of the filter pane and tabs - at least as for now according to the Microsoft - see this link and the section called "Considerations and Limitations": https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/power-bi-report-filter. So if you have filters in the filter pane you would have to move them over to the main content of the report - not ideal if users are already used to using filters on the filter pane.

Publish to website or portal will just give you an iframe with a private URL and when users load the web page they will have to authenticate.

In order to embed and authenticate on behalf of all the users you will need a token. One way to do this is using principal service account - this way you won't be supplying any user account credentials. This workflow is well documented and you can even download a test application with working code where you would need to supply your values such as workspace id, report id, tenant id, application id and finally application secret. Get started with token authentication using this link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embed-tokens. Double check token expire date and set it appropriately.