Dynamic Row Level Security in Power BI — Full Tutorial

Static Row-Level Security means creating a separate role for every single user. Ten thousand employees means ten thousand roles. That does not scale. Dynamic Row-Level Security solves this problem completely — using a single DAX role and a system function to automatically detect who is logged in. In this full tutorial, I walk through exactly how to set up Dynamic RLS in Power BI, step by step, with a real working example. 🎯 What you will learn in this video: ✅ The difference between Static RLS and Dynamic RLS — and why Dynamic RLS is the right approach for any organisation of meaningful size ✅ How to structure your data model correctly — the sales rep table, the email column, and the relationship that makes RLS work ✅ How to use USERPRINCIPALNAME() and USERNAME() to detect the logged-in user automatically — no hardcoding ✅ How to create a single dynamic role in Power BI's Manage Roles using DAX ✅ How to test your RLS setup using "View As" in Power BI Desktop ✅ How to publish your report and assign users or an Office 365 Security Group to the role ✅ A live side-by-side comparison — the report owner's full view vs. a restricted user's filtered view ✅ Why using an Office 365 group instead of individual users saves you from ongoing manual maintenance ✅ What happens when RLS gets more advanced — many-to-many relationships, hierarchies, and combinations of both 📌 Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction — what is Dynamic Row-Level Security 0:26 The example data model — sales transactions and sales rep tables 1:13 Static vs Dynamic RLS explained 2:01 Setting up the data model and relationships 2:48 Building a simple report to demonstrate the problem 3:34 Creating the USERPRINCIPALNAME() measure 5:48 Creating the dynamic role in Manage Roles 7:10 Testing with View As in Power BI Desktop 7:52 Publishing the report to the Power BI Service 9:22 Adding users to the RLS role in the Power BI Service 9:37 Sharing the report with restricted users 9:43 Live demo — comparing the report owner view vs. a restricted user view 10:51 Why Dynamic RLS avoids manual maintenance when staff change 11:55 When RLS gets complex — many-to-many relationships and hierarchies 12:22 Closing thoughts 📖 Related resources on RADACAD: 🔗 RADACAD Blog — search "Row Level Security": https://radacad.com/?s=row+level+secu... 🔗 RADACAD Blog: https://radacad.com/blog/ 🔗 Power BI Training: https://radacad.com/power-bi-training/ 🔗 Microsoft Fabric Training: https://radacad.com/microsoft-fabric-... 🌐 RADACAD: https://radacad.com #PowerBI #RowLevelSecurity #RLS #DynamicRLS #PowerBITutorial #DAX #USERPRINCIPALNAME #PowerBIDeveloper #DataSecurity #PowerBIDesktop #PowerBITips #BusinessIntelligence #DataGovernance #PowerBITraining #SemanticModel