💁 About this article
This article is part of Fugo’s Power BI knowledge base: a collection of resources answering common Power BI questions. We include notes throughout where Fugo’s integration may be helpful for displaying dashboards on digital signage.
Table of contents
Step one: identify who the “users” actually are
Most confusion here comes from lumping very different audiences together.
1. Internal interactive users
Employees clicking, filtering, drilling.
→ Need licenses.
2. External users (customers, partners)
Accessing reports in portals or apps.
→ Usually require Power BI Embedded or Premium.
3. Ambient viewers
People seeing data on TVs, walls, or shared displays.
→ Not interacting with Power BI at all.
Power BI licensing treats all three differently, but most docs only talk about the first two.
Why SharePoint embedding still requires licenses
Embedding a report in SharePoint doesn’t change the licensing model.
Users are still:
Logged into Microsoft 365
Accessing Power BI content
Consuming reports directly
So licenses still apply unless Premium capacity is involved.
Where Power BI Embedded fits (and doesn’t)
Power BI Embedded is designed for:
Customer-facing apps
Custom authentication
Software products
It's not designed as a cheaper way to share internal dashboards.
That’s why Microsoft’s own licensing language around internal use is cautious and, frankly, murky.
TV screens don’t fit any of those buckets
A wall-mounted TV:
Isn’t an internal user
Isn’t an external customer
Isn’t logging into Power BI
It’s a display surface.
That’s why teams stop asking “how do I license viewers?” and start asking “how do I keep dashboards visible?”
🤿 Deep dive: What's the best way to put Power BI on a TV screen?
Using digital signage for Power BI visibility
One authenticated connection per screen
No per-person logins
Centralized management
Designed for passive consumption
This is why signage shows up again and again in real-world Power BI setups, even if Microsoft docs barely mention it.
Summary
If people need to use Power BI, license them.
If people need to see Power BI, rethink the medium.