Secure Your Data Without Slowing Down.

• Secure Your Data Without Slowing Down

What is RLS?

• A security feature in Power BI
• Restricts data access for specific users
• Ensures users see only their own data
• Crucial for multi-tenant environments
• Maintains a single report source
• Filters data at the row level

The Core Challenge

• One report serves many users
• Each user belongs to a specific tenant
• Data must be isolated between tenants
• Security must be automatic and reliable
• Manual filtering is not a scalable solution
• Requires a dynamic, automated approach

How It Works

• Define roles within Power BI
• Write DAX rules to filter data
• Rules use a user identity function
• This function identifies the logged-in user
• The filter applies automatically upon report open
• Data is filtered before it's rendered

Key DAX Function

• Use USERPRINCIPALNAME()
• This function fetches the user's email
• Email is typically the unique identifier
• Compare it to a table column
• For example, filter Sales table by Sales[OwnerEmail]
• Creates a personalized data view

Basic Setup Steps

• Import a table with user emails
• Import a table with tenant identifiers
• Link these tables in your data model
• Navigate to Manage Roles in Power BI
• Create a new role for the table
• Write the DAX filter rule

Sample DAX Rule

• A simple rule for a User table: [Email] = USERPRINCIPALNAME()
• A rule for tenant isolation: [TenantID] = LOOKUPVALUE( UserTenantTable[TenantID], UserTenantTable[Email], USERPRINCIPALNAME() )
• The rule returns TRUE for rows the user can see
• FALSE rows are hidden from view
• Test roles using View As in Power BI

Pro Tips

• Use a dedicated user-to-tenant mapping table
• Test security thoroughly before publishing
• Utilize the View As feature for testing
• Remember RLS does not filter imported data in Power BI Desktop
• Publish to the service to enforce security
• Combine RLS with other security layers

Your Next Step

• Audit your reports for security needs
• Identify a user/tenant identifier column
• Try a simple filter on a small table
• Test it with a colleague's account
• Implement gradually across your reports
• Achieve secure, scalable multi-tenant analytics