I’ve finally gotten our sensitivity labels published in the Purview portal, but I’m a bit confused about the best way to apply them within Power BI.
Do I have to open every single report and dashboard manually to tag them? Also, if I label a semantic model (dataset) as "Confidential," does that label automatically move "up" to the reports and dashboards built on it, or "down" to the Excel files people download? I’m seeing the Sensitivity button in Power BI Desktop, but is it better to label things there before publishing or wait until they are in the Power BI Service?
3 answers
One of the best features in 2026 is Downstream Inheritance. You don't have to label everything manually if your lineage is set up correctly.
You can apply labels in two main ways.
- In Power BI Desktop: On the Home tab, there is a Sensitivity button. When you apply a label here and save the
.pbixfile, the label is "baked in." When you publish to the Service, both the resulting report and the semantic model will inherit that label immediately. -
In the Power BI Service: You can change labels at any time. For Reports and Dashboards, go to Settings (via the "More options..." three dots) and find the Sensitivity label section. For Semantic Models, it's under the "Semantic model settings" in the side pane.
If you're worried about users forgetting to label their work, your Admin can enforce Mandatory Labeling.
Exactly, Steven. In the Purview portal, Admins can set a Default Label (e.g., "General") for all new content. They can also make labeling mandatory, meaning a user cannot save a report or publish a dataset unless they have selected a sensitivity level. In 2026, we also see Upstream Inheritance—if you connect to a labeled SQL database or Excel file in SharePoint, Power BI can "see" that label and recommend (or force) the same level of protection on the .pbix file.
If you apply a label to a Semantic Model, Power BI can automatically propagate that label to all downstream reports and dashboards built from it. When you select a label on a model, a checkbox usually appears asking if you want to "Apply this label to downstream content." > Pro Tip: Inheritance also works when data leaves Power BI. If a report is labeled "Highly Confidential" and a user clicks Export to Excel, the resulting .xlsx file will automatically be encrypted and watermarked with that same label.