Creating Roles & Defining DAX Security Filters

Now that you understand the architectural concepts of Row-Level Security (RLS), let us walk through the exact step-by-step procedure to define static security roles and author DAX filter expressions in Power BI Desktop.

1. Step-by-Step Role Creation in Power BI Desktop

1. 1
   Open your report in Power BI Desktop.
2. 2
   Navigate to the Modeling ribbon tab.
3. 3
   Click on Manage Roles in the Security group.
4. 4
   In the Manage Roles dialog:

• Click New (or Create).
• Name the role (e.g., North_Region_Manager).

1. 1
   Under Tables, select the dimension table containing the attribute to filter (e.g., Dim_Geography).
2. 2
   In the Table filter DAX expression box, write your boolean filter expression:

1. 1
   Click Save.

2. Multi-Condition & Advanced DAX Security Filters

Security filters support compound boolean logic (&&, ||, IN):

Example 1: Multi-Region Access

Example 2: Compound Dimension Security

Example 3: Threshold Filtering (Restricting Confidential Records)

3. Assigning Users in the Power BI Service

After publishing your report to the Power BI Service:

1. 1
   Navigate to your Workspace and locate the Dataset / Semantic Model.
2. 2
   Click the More Options (...) icon next to the dataset and select Security.
3. 3
   Under the role name, enter individual user email addresses or Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Security Groups.
4. 4
   Click Add and Save.