Power BI workspaces are used to enable collaboration and enforce data governance. As business needs change over time, you may find that you need to delete a Power BI workspace because an employee is either no longer with the company or it no longer serves its purpose.
We’ll look at the different ways to delete shared workspaces in Power BI to keep your reporting environment clean and free of unused workspaces.
What is a Power BI Workspace?
Power BI workspaces are collaborative environments where multiple users can create and share reports, dashboards, and other Power BI content. Workspaces can be shared with different users and have Power BI reports and dashboards assigned to them. Users with access to the workspace will also have access to all of the reports available.
Workspaces can be accessed from the Power BI service at PowerBI.com. Click on the Workspaces button on the left side of webpage to view the workspaces that you have access to.
Over time, the number of workspaces that have been created tend to grow and some become obsolete as companies reorganize or project priorities change.
It’s best practice to delete unused workspaces in Power BI when they are no longer needed to avoid clutter.
How to Delete a Power BI Workspace
To delete a Power BI Workspace, log into the Power BI Service at PowerBI.com. Navigate to the Workspaces tab, and click the … button to the right of the Power BI workspace that you wish to delete. Select Workspace Settings, go to the Other options, and select Remove this Workspace. The workspace and all content in the workspace will be permanently deleted after 30 days.
Under workspace settings, navigate to other, and select remove this workspace.
Microsoft grants Power BI Admins the ability to delete almost anything in the Power BI Service. While it’s a nice feature to have, we recommend enforcing stricter data governance around who can create and modify workspaces to better protect data and to mitigate the need to centrally manage Power BI assets that grow out of control.
We’ll look at how to control who can create workspaces later in this article.
How to Recover a Deleted Power BI Workspace
Power BI Admins can restore a workspace and its contents if it was unintentionally deleted within 30 days of the intial deletion request.
To Restore a Workspace in Power BI, navigate to the settings icon at the top right of the Power BI service, and select Admin Portal. Navigate to Workspaces, and any deleted workspace can be restored under the … options.
After selecting to restore a workspace an admin has to be assigned to the new workspace. After assigning an admin, you can also rename the workspace and assign additional users with different roles.
The new users will have access to the workspace, and all contents within it.
Once restored, it will look like the workspace was never deleted.
Note: Users may need to log out, and log back into the Power BI service to see the newly restored workspace.
Disabling the Ability to Create New Workspaces in Power BI
To maintain stricter data governance standards, Power BI Admins can disable the ability for users to create new workspaces. To disable the ability to create new workspaces in Power BI, log into the Power BI service, click the settings icon at the top right of the page, select Admin Portal. Next, navigate to Tenant Settings, and Workspace Settings. Admins can disable the ability to Create Workspaces at the organization or security group level.
There are additional security settings within Tenant Settings that every enterprise should explore in Power BI. While Power BI makes it easy to share data, it also provides very granular control for improved data governance.
Conclusion
Power BI makes it easy for users or admins to delete workspaces. If a workspace is deleted, Microsoft provides a 30 day window before files are permanently removed. Reach out to your Power BI Admin and request that they restore the workspace. Once restored, all items from the workspace including dashboards and reports will be restored and available to assigned users.
To improve Power BI data governance, Power BI Admins can disable the ability for users to create new workspaces. This is a recommended approach for enterprises that need more centralized control over who can access specific data.
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