---
title: "Testing Power BI: What Works on Which License"
slug: "testing-power-bi-what-works-on-which-license"
updated: 2026-10-15T05:44:07Z
published: 2026-10-15T05:44:07Z
canonical: "docs.validatar.com/testing-power-bi-what-works-on-which-license"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.validatar.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Testing Power BI: What Works on Which License

## Overview

Validatar tests Power BI through the [Power BI Service Data Source Template](/docs/power-bi-service-data-source-template). Most of what goes wrong in Power BI can be tested on any license. Rendering reports needs capacity, and that includes rendering a report as a specific user to test row-level security. This page shows which checks need what, and lists what to ask your Power BI administrator for.

## Checks by tier

| Check | Any license | Contributor role | Capacity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Workspaces, semantic models, reports, pages and dashboards in the catalog | Yes |  |  |
| Model tables, columns and measures in the catalog | Yes | Models with row-level security |  |
| Refresh succeeded, ran recently, ran on schedule | Yes |  |  |
| DirectQuery source still answers | Yes |  |  |
| Model parameters point at production | Yes |  |  |
| Totals and breakdowns match the warehouse (DAX against SQL) | Yes |  |  |
| Orphan keys, duplicate keys, broken measures, blank attributes | Yes |  |  |
| Column profiling and measure totals in profile history | Yes |  |  |
| Columns, measures and relationships unchanged since the last run | Yes |  |  |
| Measure expressions unchanged |  | Yes |  |
| Visuals point at fields that still exist |  | Yes |  |
| Row-level security role filters as approved, every fact table covered |  | Yes |  |
| Page renders, not blank, no Power BI error text |  |  | Yes |
| A card or chart shows the same number as the model or warehouse (OCR) |  |  | Yes |
| Page or visual unchanged since recent runs, brand colours present |  |  | Yes |
| Paginated report data |  |  | Yes |
| Report rendered as a user shows only that user's rows |  |  | Yes, plus Contributor |

- **Any license** means Pro (shared capacity), Premium Per User, Fabric, Premium or Embedded.
- **Contributor role** means the service principal is Contributor, Member or Admin on the workspace. It is the role we recommend in every case.
- **Capacity** means the workspace sits on Fabric (F), Premium (P) or Embedded (A, EM) capacity.

## Two things that surprise people

**Premium Per User cannot export.** Microsoft's Export To File API, which every rendering check uses, does not support Premium Per User workspaces. A workspace on Premium Per User behaves like Pro for these tests. Rendering needs a Fabric, Premium or Embedded capacity, and every semantic model the report uses must be on capacity too. A Fabric capacity can be paused when it is not in use.

**A service principal cannot query a model that has row-level security.** Power BI refuses DAX from a service principal against any model with row-level security or single sign-on, whichever user it names. For those models Validatar reads the role definitions (Contributor) and renders reports as a user (capacity).

## What to ask your Power BI administrator for

1. **An app registration with a client secret,** and its service principal in a security group. The app needs no Power BI API permissions. Remove `Tenant.Read.All` or `Tenant.ReadWrite.All` if it has them.
2. **Tenant settings for that security group:** *Service principals can call Fabric public APIs* (Developer settings) and *Semantic Model Execute Queries REST API* (Integration settings). For rendering, also *Export reports as PowerPoint presentations or PDF documents*, and optionally *Export reports as image files*.
3. **The service principal as Contributor** on each workspace to be tested.
4. **For rendering:** the workspaces on Fabric, Premium or Embedded capacity, and reports without a sensitivity label, because a service principal cannot export a labelled report to PDF.

The Prerequisites section of the [Power BI Service Data Source Template](/docs/power-bi-service-data-source-template) article has the detail behind each item.

## Related Articles

- [Power BI Service Data Source Template](/docs/power-bi-service-data-source-template)
- [Power BI Sample Tests](/docs/power-bi-sample-tests)
- [Power BI - Catalog Custom Fields](/docs/power-bi-catalog-custom-fields)