Major changes to PowerBI licensing - heads up if you're using it currently.

[Sam McNeill]

HI Guys,

I've shared about PowerBI a few times in this group, both when I was at St Andrew's College and since I've left and joined MSFT.

**Heads Up:** Last week MSFT announced major changes to the way PowerBI licensing will work, with restrictions around the free version (likely to restrict schools just starting to explore PowerBI) and a new scalable PowerBI Premium service that works on capacity/consumption rather than licensing individual users with Pro licenses. This could really help larger schools / tertiary organisations that are wanting to deliver PowerBI  reports to students/parents for example but it WILL come with a hefty monthly price tag.

I've tried to distill the major the changes for you to be aware of in the following blog post:

https://samuelmcneill.com/2017/05/10/powerbi-major-licensing-changes/

Given I know a number of schools who post/read on this forum ARE trying to use PowerBI free version, it's important you understand the implications of this change if you're trying to invest in PowerBI as a reporting mechanism in your school.

Happy to try answer questions that schools have around PowerBI license changes.

Cheers

Sam

[Jake Wills]

If you're looking for a cheap alternative that works really easily out of the box for analysing and monitoring school data you should check out assay: https://assay.co.nz/assay3.php

Full demo there as well :)