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mbbozzuto's avatar
mbbozzuto
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4 years ago
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Source Code Control management for Power BI reports

We are using the Power BI premium per user in our enterprise and we have multiple reports in the Power BI Service ecosystem.  Since we have multiple users can step in to create or edit reports, manag...
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Greg_Deckler's avatar
Greg_Deckler
Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion
4 years ago

mbbozzuto So, this is a broad subject. Often, version control of PBIX files is done by saving the Power BI PBIX as a template and checking the template into source control, either GitHub or even a SharePoint document repository. Working on the same report simultaneously isn't very well supported in Power BI unless you are editing/authoring the reports in the Service. You can improve this capability by separating the datasets from the reports, so have a central dataset that is published and using DirectQuery for Power BI Datasets to connect to that dataset and create the report visuals. In terms of bullet 2, ImkeF has developed tools to help with this. Also, in the Service there is a lineage view that can also help. For standard template settings, use themes and create a report template that is used as a starting point for reports. A lot of this is covered in Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition.

  • mbbozzuto's avatar
    mbbozzuto
    Icon for Advocate II rankAdvocate II
    4 years ago

    Thanks Greg_Deckler for the reply and feedback.  Saving the .pbix/.pbit in source control isn't quite what I'm thinking because as far as I can tell, that is some form of a compiled file that can only be viewed/modified using within Power BI desktop.  We separate all of our reports from our datasets where we have Power BI datasets running in the service and then connect to them in Power BI Desktop to build reports that we publish to the service for sharing.  We use the Tabular Editor tool to modify the data model and then push that to the service through XMLA end point; the data model definition is saved in a source control repo that multiple developers can contribute to through pull requests and that works really well.  It would be great to replicate that functionality in reports where basically the underlying report definition file could be edited and analyzed as code in a json like structure (similar to saved themes) and then Power BI desktop/service could render that file.