Lab: Real-Life Hospital Example

Real-Life Hospital Example

The compliance officer requires that the Westside Clinic manager can only ever see Westside Clinic data – never Central Hospital or Eastside Clinic records – even though they’re all in the same report.

Practical Exercise (Hands-On)

Publish the report to a Hospital Analytics workspace. Create an RLS role called Branch Manager that filters doctors[hospital_branch] to a single branch, then test it using View As Role. Pin key visuals to a new dashboard and share it as view-only.

Step-by-Step

⚠️ Caution: This lab was developed using Microsoft Power BI Desktop v2.155.756.0 (64-bit). If you are using a different version, you may notice minor differences in the menus, icons, or interface. 

1. In Power BI Desktop, click Home > Publish.
2. Sign in if prompted, choose or create a workspace named “Hospital Analytics,” and click Select.
3. Once publishing completes, click “Open [report] in Power BI” to view it in the Service.
4. Back in Desktop, go to Modeling > Manage Roles and click Create; name the role “Branch Manager.”
5. Select the doctors table and, in the DAX Filter box for hospital_branch, enter an expression such as [hospital_branch] = “Westside Clinic” for testing (in production, map USERPRINCIPALNAME() to a branch-lookup table instead of hard-coding a branch).
6. Click Save.
7. Go to Modeling > View As, check “Branch Manager,” and click OK to preview the report as that role; confirm only Westside Clinic data appears across all visuals.
8. Turn off View As, then republish the file (Home > Publish) so the RLS role is included in the Service version.
9. In the Power BI Service, open the dataset’s Security settings and add specific user email addresses to the Branch Manager role.
10. In the Service, select the visuals you want on a dashboard and click the pin icon on each to pin them to a new dashboard named “Hospital Leadership Dashboard.”
11. Use the Share button on the dashboard to share it as view-only with a colleague’s email, or generate a view-only link.

Expected Result

The report is published to a “Hospital Analytics” workspace, a working Branch Manager RLS role restricts data by hospital_branch, and a “Hospital Leadership Dashboard” exists with pinned visuals shared as view-only.

Mini Lab / Scenario Task

Walk through how scheduled refresh would work if this data lived in a live hospital database instead of static CSVs, and document the refresh frequency you’d recommend and why.