In this article, we will explain how licensing for Zebra BI Visuals for Power BI work. While licensing and all circumstances surrounding it can easily get complicated and overlapping, we will try to provide answers to the questions you may have.
How does the Zebra BI license work?
Zebra BI license works on an annual subscription basis. This means you’ll be billed annually in advance on a recurring, annual basis.
Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of each renewal period. If you decide to cancel your subscription, you can do so by contacting our customer support team at least 30 days prior to the renewal date – no questions asked. You can check the full Terms & Conditions here.
What does the Zebra BI for Power BI license include?
It includes access to all Zebra BI Tables, Zebra BI Charts, and Zebra BI Cards PRO, including technical support and all the future product updates.
How do updates of your custom visuals work?
The Zebra BI developer team prepares an updated version with new features and bug fixes that get published on AppSource on a monthly basis.
For you, the updates are seamless and simple. Your reports get updated automatically the next time when you open them – this means you don’t have to do anything to update your visuals.
How can the account holder access the license key?
After purchase, the assigned account holder will get their own secure member account at our web page with their own username and password. Your member account includes the license key along with your license information and the Zebra BI style editor for the custom design of your themes.
How can the account holder share the license key with designers?
The account holder needs to share the license key found in their member account with report creators (designers) who add the visuals to the report and enter the Zebra BI license key.
Report viewers don’t need to enter the license key – however, the license should still cover both designers and viewers.
Where can I see details about my license?
Upon purchase, you’ll get a member account at our secure, dedicated website (https://zebrabi.com/members/). It will contain detailed information about your license with your license information and the Zebra BI style editor for the custom design of your themes.
Why annual billing subscription (not monthly)?
By making an annual instead of a monthly payment, we want to encourage you to take enough time to make your purchase decision and to consider all benefits and factors of our product and whether it will satisfy the needs of your business. Yearly payment also allows us to better understand the financial state of our company, so we can make better business decisions concerning our growth and expanding our services.
I have already purchased the Power BI subscription. Do I still have to purchase Zebra BI to use the visuals?
Yes. Zebra BI’s licensing model is not tied to Microsoft’s subscription-based plans in any way whatsoever. We are a plug-in solution in the data visualization field of the Power BI tool. In order to be able to successfully use our custom visuals when creating your Power BI reports, you need to buy a Zebra BI license as well. As such, Zebra BI visuals aren’t covered by Power BI Premium subscription, which is a tenant-level Office 365 subscription and has no relation with the usage of Zebra BI licenses. Although Power BI Premium capacity enables the sharing of data with anyone without purchasing a per-user license, this is not the case with the sharing of data (reports) that are using Zebra BI custom visuals within. A Zebra BI license is also necessary when engaging (consuming) reports via the Power BI report server.
Do I need to cover all the users in our company who have a Power BI PRO license?
While the Zebra BI license is not needed for every Power BI user, those who will engage with the reports using Zebra BI visuals need to be covered with our license.
I have installed the free trial of Zebra BI visuals and I am worried that when I install the full, licensed version, my work will be lost. How does this work?
Going from a trial license to a paid license work seamlessly and is very simple. You just enter the new license key and save/republish the reports you have created so far and everything should work.
I want to embed my Power BI reports into an app. Can I use Zebra BI visuals with Power BI embedded?
In short – yes, you can.
In addition to the per-user pricing, our embedded pricing solution is very similar to the one you are used to from Microsoft – depending on the node (A1, A2, A3, etc.) you are using within the company. Companies or ISVs, who use Microsoft Power BI Embedded (A1-A6 SKUs), can include Zebra BI visuals, reports, and dashboards into their application or service.
Please contact our sales team at sales@zebrabi.com to get a quote.
I want to share our reports in emails, social media, and websites. Can I do that with reports that use Zebra BI visuals, using Power BI Publish to web option?
We support you when publishing your reports if those are meant for general public use (like yearly income reports etc.) and we won’t charge you any additional cost. If you are using this option for in-company dashboards, reports, and analysis meant for internal use, then you are required to have a license.
Can I redistribute my Zebra BI licenses?
The license for Zebra BI visuals is valid for a specified number of total users who can be either Power BI “designers” or Power BI “consumers”, and within the specified company that was determined upon the purchase.
In case you’re using Power BI Embedded, you can buy a Zebra BI license for Power BI Embedded. For more details, please contact our sales team at sales@zebrabi.com.
In any other case you must not rent, lease, lend, sell, transfer, or otherwise distribute copies of our visuals. If you want to become a reseller of our product or a Zebra BI partner, you can check out our Partner program.
Can I publish or share reports I created using Zebra BI visuals?
Yes, all graphs, calculations, data, and tables are your intellectual property and you have full rights to use them indefinitely in any form outside of our software. In the latter case, you still need a license to edit and display the visuals on the possible platforms.
I’d like to share our reports in emails, on social media, and on websites. Can I do that with reports that use Zebra BI visuals, using Power BI “Publish to Web” option?
We allow the publicly publishing your reports if those are meant for general public use (like yearly income reports etc.) and we won’t charge you any additional cost for such use.
However, we don’t recommend publishing any of your internal reports online as these reports become publicly available and easily searchable on Google.
How do we enter new license keys after we renew them every year?
When you renew your licenses, you don’t have to change the license key in all your reports, at least not all at once. You only need to change the license key if/when you want to change a report (put the report in so called “Edit” mode). All reports that have been published in the past will run indefinitely for all viewers. Only when a designer wants to change a report, he/she has to enter the new license key. Technically, the license key is checked at the moment when a designer clicks “Edit” and wants to update something in the report. At that point, this user needs to enter the new license key, otherwise, this particular report will get locked.