A question I often get from many students is: “How can I practice Power BI service features if I do not have a Power BI Account?”. Not having a Power BI account can happen because of many scenarios; your company might close this option so that the process be only channeled through a specific process within the company. Or you may not have the permission to do so. Not having an account makes it difficult to practice Power BI Service options such as workspace, datasets, dashboards, dataflows, apps, and many other features. On the other hand, even if you have the Power BI Service account, in most of the organizations, you are not the service administrator, so you cannot practice tenant-settings configurations in the service.
Fortunately, there is a way to create your own Power BI sandbox; which means an environment just for yourself, with 25 accounts. You will be the administrator of your environment. The environment will be up for at least 90 days, and you can practice whatever you want for the Power BI service there. The best of all, it is FREE. You don’t have to pay a cent for it. Credit card detail is not needed. What better you could wish for?
So how does this work, Let’s jump into that topic.
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Microsoft 365 Developer Program
The name of the program that will give you this sandbox is Microsoft 365 Developer Program. This is not just for Power BI, it is for the Microsoft 365 platform. This means Office 365, Teams, Power BI, Azure Active Directory, and many other fantastic features. Here is what is included for free;
- Includes 25 user licenses for development purposes
- Preconfigured for sideloading Teams apps
- Fully loaded sample data with 16 sample users, user data, and content to help you model your solutions.
- Easy access to pre-provisioned core Microsoft 365 workloads and capabilities (Windows not included), including:
- All Office 365 apps
- Everything you need for Power Platform development
- Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
- Advanced analytics with Power BI
- Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) for compliance and information protection
- Azure Active Directory for building advanced identity and access management solutions
Reference here.
With this sandbox, you will get 25 users with Microsoft 365 E5 license, which includes Power BI Pro in it. Below is a list of some of the products and services in the Microsoft 365 E5 license;
- Azure Active Directory Premium P1
- Azure Active Directory Premium P2
- Azure Advanced Threat Protection
- Azure Information Protection Premium P1
- Azure Information Protection Premium P2
- Customer Lockbox
- Exchange Online (Plan 2)
- Flow for Office 365
- Information Protection for Office 365 – Premium
- Information Protection for Office 365 – Standard
- Microsoft Azure Active Directory Rights
- Microsoft Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
- Microsoft Cloud App Security
- Microsoft Forms (Plan E5)
- Microsoft Intune
- Microsoft MyAnalytics (Full)
- Microsoft Planner
- Microsoft StaffHub
- Microsoft Stream for O365 E5 SKU
- Microsoft Teams
- Mobile Device Management for Office 365
- Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery
- Office 365 Advanced Security Management
- Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (Plan 1)
- Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (Plan 2)
- Office 365 Privileged Access Management
- Office 365 ProPlus
- Office Online
- Phone System
- Power BI Pro
- PowerApps for Office 365 Plan 3
- SharePoint Online (Plan 2)
- Skype for Business Online (Plan 2)
- Sway
- To-Do (Plan 3)
- Whiteboard (Plan 3)
- Yammer Enterprise
How to set up the envionment?
The process of setting up the environment is easy. You first need to go to this address and click on Join the program.
The next step is a form asking some primary questions;
And of course, some questions as what is your role in the organization (No matter the response, you will get the sandbox);
It also asks for your product interest. Again this won’t impact the sandbox allowance.
Then you can choose the configuration of your tenant. such as Region and the admin’s username and password;
You also have the choice to either select an instant sandbox with some sample data or a customized one. For the purpose of the Power BI, the instant one just works perfectly, and you don’t have to wait for a couple of days to get access to your environment.
Once the setup is done, you will get the details of your environment instantly. This includes the domain name, the admin’s username, and some other information. Your environment will have 25 users and is valid for 90 days (it may extend after this period. Microsoft will be evaluating the environment before extending the period).
The sandbox environment
Your environment is ready. Simply click on “Go to subscription”, or alternatively go to https://Portal.Office.com and log in using your username and password. Once logged in, you can go to the Admin portal of Office 365, and you will see sample users added there;
You can also log in to the Power BI service using the same email account;
This is your Power BI service environment and account. Your account is a Power BI Pro account, but if you need Premium, you can try the Premium Per User Trial option. The pro account will give you access to many things already, such as workspaces, datasets, dashboards, Goals, apps, sharing, scheduling refresh and many other useful features of the Power BI Service.
If you log in using the admin account, you will also have access to the Admin Portal of the Power BI service environment and the tenant settings. This is one of the best features of this sandbox because even if you already have a Power BI account in your organization’s tenant, you are not probably the admin and won’t have the ability to see how admin configurations are set up. With your sandbox, you are your own admin and can do whatever you want.
Why do you need a sandbox?
In Summary, The sandbox is very useful in many scenarios, such as below;
- You want a test environment to practice
- You don’t have enought priviledge or access in your organizational environment
- You want to learn Power BI service in a sample environment
- You do not have Power BI Service administrator account of your tenant
- and many more
Remember that the Microsoft 365 Developer Program is not just for Power BI, It includes Teams, Office, and many other things. This is a perfect place to learn and practice anything to do with the Microsoft 365 platform including Power BI and Power Platform.
What’s in the box?
The sandbox comes with the below features for 90 days since the day you start it;
- Includes 25 user licenses for development purposes
- Preconfigured for sideloading Teams apps
- Fully loaded sample data with 16 sample users, user data, and content to help you model your solutions.
- Easy access to pre-provisioned core Microsoft 365 workloads and capabilities (Windows not included), including:
- All Office 365 apps
- Everything you need for Power Platform development
- Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
- Advanced analytics with Power BI
- Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) for compliance and information protection
- Azure Active Directory for building advanced identity and access management solutions
What you cannot use this for?
This is a sandbox environment, and should NOT be used for product reports, or reports shared with the end-user. Microsoft is watching this environment and if you are not using it properly, your account will be deactivated after 90 days. If you are really using it for practice, test, and learning purposes, the period will be extended after 90 days.
This FAQ page from Microsoft explains some of the commonly asked questions about this program.
You need to have either a work or school account, or a Microsoft account (under outlook.com is also possible), or you can use your Visual Studio ID. To learn more read this article.
Summary
The Microsft 365 Developer Program is a perfect sandbox for learning, practicing, and testing Power BI, Power Platform, and all Microsoft 365 ecosystems. I strongly recommend it to instructors, and students, as well as Power BI users who don’t have full access to their organizational tenant. This sandbox is free, comes with 25 users, lasts for 90 days, and will be extended after that too if not used for production purposes. I hope you enjoy using it. Please let me know in the comments below for what usage you are using it, or if you have any questions.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.