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row-level-security-desktop-define-roles.md

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title Include file for roles and rules in Power BI Desktop
description Include file for roles and rules in Power BI Desktop. This include file will be referenced in the content where roles and rules in Power BI Desktop are used.
author billmath
ms.author billmath
ms.topic include
ms.date 10/22/2025

Define roles and rules in Power BI Desktop

You can define roles and rules within Power BI Desktop. With this editor, you can toggle between using the default drop-down interface and a DAX interface. When you publish to Power BI, you also publish the role definitions.

To define security roles:

  1. Import data into your Power BI Desktop report, or configure a DirectQuery connection.

    [!NOTE] You can't define roles within Power BI Desktop for Analysis Services live connections. You need to do that within the Analysis Services model.

  2. From the Modeling tab, select Manage Roles.

  3. From the Manage roles window, select New to create a new role.

  4. Under Roles, provide a name for the role and select enter.

    [!NOTE] You can't define a role with a comma, for example London,ParisRole.

  5. Under Select tables, select the table to which you want to apply a row-level security filter.

  6. Under Filter data, use the default editor to define your roles. The expressions created return a true or false value.

    [!NOTE] Not all row-level security filters supported in Power BI can be defined using the default editor. Limitations include expressions that today can only be defined using DAX including dynamic rules such as username() or userprincipalname(). To define roles using these filters switch to use the DAX editor.

  7. Optionally select Switch to DAX editor to switch to using the DAX editor to define your role. DAX expressions return a value of true or false. For example: [Entity ID] = “Value”. The DAX editor is complete with autocomplete for formulas (intellisense). You can select the checkmark above the expression box to validate the expression and the X button above the expression box to revert changes.

    [!NOTE] You can use username() within this expression. Be aware that username() has the format of DOMAIN\username within Power BI Desktop. Within the Power BI service and Power BI Report Server, it's in the format of the user's User Principal Name (UPN). Additionally, in this expression box, use commas to separate DAX function arguments even if you're using a locale that normally uses semicolon separators, such as French or German.

  8. You can switch back to the default editor by selecting Switch to default editor. All changes made in either editor interface persist when switching interfaces when possible. When defining a role using the DAX editor that can't be defined in the default editor, if you attempt to switch to the default editor you'll be prompted with a warning that switching editors may result in some information being lost. To keep this information, select Cancel and continue only editing this role in the DAX editor.

    [!NOTE] In this expression box, use commas to separate DAX function arguments even if you're using a locale that normally uses semicolon separators, such as French or German.

  9. Select Save.

You can't assign users to a role within Power BI Desktop. You assign them in the Power BI service. You can enable dynamic security within Power BI Desktop by making use of the username() or userprincipalname() DAX functions and having the proper relationships configured.