As we rolled out the preview of Shared Datasets and the new Build permission, we received feedback that our limitations on export of summarized data from a visual are overly restrictive.
Today a user with Read permission can see a visual’s data in two ways. First, they can see it rendered in the visual. Second, they can use the See Data feature to view a grid of the data used to render the visual. The grid contains only the summarized data.
As such the user has access to the summarized data for a visual already. Before the recent permission changes to introduce the Build permission, users with the Read permission were also able to export the summarized data from the visual to a CSV file. With the changes after Build was introduced, export summarized data required Build permission even though users could still access the same data as described above.
We are adjusting our approach based on your feedback. Specifically, we will allow users with the Read permission to export summarized data from a visual. This change will be rolling out over the next week.
Exporting the underlying data for a visual will continue to require Build permission. The underlying data is the detailed rows that were rolled up to show in the visual. This ensures that consumers do not export more data than the report is showing them.
For organizations needing a truly locked down data export experience, we offer several existing controls:
- The report author can fully prevent any data export, can allow exporting only summarized data, or also allow export underlying data for users with the Build permission.
- The Power BI admin can control which users can export data across all content in Power BI. This can be used to lock down all data export experiences.