Power BI Blog: Enhanced Row Level Security Editor

Welcome back to this week’s edition of the Power BI blog series.  This week, we look at the enhanced Row Level Security editor – albeit only in Preview presently.

This may still only be in Preview but we think this is definitely worth a look.  You may now quickly and easily define Row Level Security (RLS) roles and filters without having to write any DAX.  Select ‘Manage roles’ in the Ribbon to use the new drop-down interface to create and edit security roles.  If you prefer DAX or require DAX for your filter definitions, the software supports toggling between using the default drop-down editor and a DAX editor.

All changes made in either editor interface will persist when switching interfaces when possible.  However, not all RLS filters supported in Power BI may be defined using the default editor.  Limitations include expressions that can only be defined using DAX including dynamic rules such as USERNAME() or USERPRINCIPALNAME().  When defining a role with these limitations in the DAX editor, if you attempt to switch to the default editor you will be prompted with a warning that switching editors may result in some information being lost.  To keep this information simply select ‘Cancel’ and continue only editing this role in the DAX editor.

You can try this Preview feature right now by going to Files -> Options and Settings -> Options -> Preview features and turn on ‘Enhanced row-level security editor’.  Try it now!

In the meantime, please remember we offer training in Power BI which you can find out more about here.  If you wish to catch up on past articles, you can find all of our past Power BI blogs here.