Changing underlying source column names for visuals

I have several reports which use one single model hosted on the PBI portal.  We made a change in the model recently.  As a result some columns were renamed in the model.  Of course, this broke many of the visuals on the report.  

My question is, is there a less painful way to replace the underlying source column in these reports without using PBI Desktop?

I am going along the following path, but have not made much headway. 

I extracted the Layout (json metadata for visuals) from the PBIX file (the renaming the pbix to .zip file and unzipping method.)  I see the column names in there, which I could try to replace.  However, without understanding the metadata layout, I am reluctant to move froward with this idea.  For example, the query node for one of the visuals in the layout json looks like as shown below.  I recognize only some parts of it.

{
   "Commands":[
      {
         "SemanticQueryDataShapeCommand":{
            "Query":{
               "Version":2,
               "From":[
                  {
                     "Name":"c",
                     "Entity":"Calculated Table",
                     "Type":0
                  }
               ],
               "Select":[
                  {
                     "Column":{
                        "Expression":{
                           "SourceRef":{
                              "Source":"c"
                           }
                        },
                        "Property":"Col2"
                     },
                     "Name":"Calculated Table.Col2"
                  }
               ]
            },
            "Binding":{
               "Primary":{
                  "Groupings":[
                     {
                        "Projections":[
                           0
                        ],
                        "Subtotal":1
                     }
                  ]
               },
               "DataReduction":{
                  "DataVolume":3,
                  "Primary":{
                     "Window":{
                        "Count":500
                     }
                  }
               },
               "Version":1
            }
         }
      }
   ]
}