A Power BI admin is focused on the overall deployment of Power BI within an organization in terms of security, governance, and resource utilization. Power BI admins are not involved in the day-to-day activities of specific projects but rather configure and manage settings in Power BI that align with the organization's policies. A Power BI admin, for example, monitors the adoption of Power BI content, identifies any high-risk user activities, and manages any Power BI Premium capacities that have been provisioned. Additionally, Power BI admins use Azure Active Directory security groups within the Power BI admin portal to manage access to various Power BI features, such as sharing Power BI content with external organizations.
Users assigned to the Power BI service administrator role obtain access to the Power BI admin portal and the rights to configure Power BI Tenant settings. For example, in the following image, Anna Sanders is assigned to the Power BI service administrator role within the Office 365 admin center:
The Power BI service administrator role allows Anna to access the Power BI admin portal to enable or disable features, such as exporting data and printing reports and dashboard. BI and IT managers that oversee Power BI deployments are often assigned to this role, as it also provides the ability to manage Power BI Premium capacities and access to standard monitoring and usage reporting. Note that only global administrators of Office 365 can assign users to the Power BI service administrator role.
The Power BI admin should have a clear understanding of the organizational policy on the various tenant settings, such as whether content can be shared with external users. For most tenant settings, the Power BI service administrator can define rules in the Power BI admin portal to include or exclude specific security groups. For example, external sharing can be disabled for the entire organization except for a specific security group of users. Most organizations should assign two or more users to the Power BI service administrator role and ensure these users are trained on the administration features specific to this role. Chapter 12, Administering Power BI for an Organization, contains details on the Power BI admin portal and other administrative topics.