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One of my client has made this incredible (and really huge) Excel document with many data sources, sheets, Powerpivot tables, graphs, etc... Awesome work.

He want to share it with authorized people but protect his valuable content (aka data sources and document 'logic'). Users may be able to use the filters for example but in view mode only.

Unfortunately, Sharepoint is not an option for my client. Here's what he say about his experience:

As part of its offerings Office 365 including SharePoint Online, Microsoft proposed the Power BI service. This allowed to create a Power BI website where we used to install and operate PowerPivot workbooks.

I have subscribed to Office 365 (free trial) to share my files. That's when I found that the function of creating a Power BI site, necessary to activate a PowerPivot workbook on SharePoint Online, was not proposed.

My research led me to question, besides the web, Sharepoint and Cloud service providers. I found on the web information indicating that the old experience ended at 31/12/2015 in favor of the new, with a time to experience old customers to migrate to the new.

Service companies have confirmed to me that Microsoft had already locked the Power BI for Office 365 thus prohibiting any new entrant.

Microsoft seeks to emphasize two offers: - Enterprise SharePoint (SharePoint classic) on server, - Power BI online (the new experience Power BI).

The first solution is expensive. The second is not yet advanced enough to become an alternative to PowerPivot.

What do you think? Jamespot, Alfresco, Huddle, OneDrive Online Excel, ...?

fro_oo
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  • What are the gaps in the Power BI portal? It would be the smoothest besides SharePoint in terms of experience. – greggyb Nov 29 '15 at 05:37

2 Answers2

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Take a look again at Power BI :). We just added the ability to pin Excel Ranges to dashboards. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2015/11/24/pin-a-range-from-excel-to-your-dashboard.aspx

If you build an organizational content pack around your excel workbook, you can share it with your users without needing share the original excel workbook with your users.

Lukasz P.
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I don't think PowerBI in it's current state can replace the Excel based PowerBI stack. However, that means that a SharePoint online customers lost most of the BI functionalities or they have to pay for it (PowerBI or stand-alone SharePoint).

Daniel Bardos
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  • Power BI, the web portal, can host Excel workbooks in Excel Services, and expose this in the portal. The only major feature of Excel that you lose in Excel services is VBA. What are the major gaps you identify? – greggyb Dec 08 '15 at 12:36
  • @greggyb As far as I can understand, using Power BI (the portal) my client may be able to upload his Workbooks without to much editing IF he doesn't use Macros? – fro_oo Dec 09 '15 at 21:59
  • This is correct. If the workbooks do not utilize VBA, they should work with no/minimal modification in Excel Online which is exposed via the Power BI portal. – greggyb Dec 09 '15 at 22:34