As Power BI Administrator, you can view all Workspaces in your Tenant via Admin Portal, but it does not automatically allow you to access contents in a Workspace you are not a member of.

If you try to assign an external B2B user to a Workspace in Power BI via Admin portal and you are not a member of that Workspace, you will receive a “Failed to assign” error message.

As an Administrator, I tried to assign an external B2B user to a Workspace that I am not a member of (via Power BI Admin Portal), and received the following error:

Here is how I fixed the error:

1. In Azure Portal

• Create a guest user
• Select Azure Active Directory
• Select Users
• Select new guest User

• Enter the name and email address of the external user
• Click save.

The user will receive an email similar to this:

• Click on Get Started
• Sign in with the external account, for this example I am using a gmail account
• Click Accept

Azure B2B Guest users can edit and manage contents in a Workspace, with full experience in Power BI

To allow the guest user to Edit and manage contents in Workspaces, you need to change the following settings:

• From Azure Portal
• Select Azure Active Directory
• User Settings
• Manage external collaboration settings

2) In Power BI

The option is Disabled by default, a Global or Power BI Admin can Enable it via Admin Portal using below steps:

• Click Settings
• Select Admin Portal
• Select Tenant Settings
• Allow external guest users to edit and manage content in the organization
• Enabled ( You can choose The entire organization or Specific security groups)
• Click Apply

As stated, if you are a Global or Power BI Admin, and you try to assign an external user to a workspace via Admin Portal but you are not added to the Workspace as a member, or you do not have access to its contents, you will receive “Failed to assign user to Workspace” error.

To fix the issue, you need to assign yourself first to the Workspace via Admin Portal.

• Select Settings
• Admin Portal
• Workspaces
• Select the ellipsis for the Workspace
• Select Access
• Add your email address
• Click Add

This will allow you to have access to the Workspace contents and assign Guest users to collaborate in the Workspace.

Now add the guest or external user using following steps:

• From Home, select Workspaces
• Workspace name( For this example Workspace name is HR)
• Select the ellipsis (…)
• Workspace Access
• Add the email address, for this example I am using a gmail account (testtest@gmail.com)
• Click Add

The external user can easily access the Workspace by using your Tenant URL, from help (?) -> About Power BI -> Tenant URL.

Happy collaboration 🙂