Understanding existing reports

Hi,

Your list already covers most of the important areas for understanding an existing Power BI solution. I would also consider adding the following points, especially if the objective is report handover, support, or future development:

1. Business objective and key KPIs – What business decisions does the report support, and how are the key KPIs/metrics defined?
2. Data sources and connectivity – Source systems, connection types, gateways, authentication, and any dependencies.
3. Semantic model architecture – Number of semantic models, Import/DirectQuery/Composite/Live connection, and overall model design.
4. Facts and Dimensions – Table structure, storage mode, relationships, cardinality, active/inactive relationships, and many-to-many/bridge tables.
5. Refresh strategy – Full vs. incremental refresh, refresh frequency, refresh duration, gateway dependency, and failure handling.
6. Data volume and history – Current volume, expected growth, and required historical period.
7. Power Query / M – Complex transformations, custom functions, parameters, query folding, and dependencies between queries.
8. DAX implementation – Complex measures, calculated columns/tables, calculation groups, time intelligence, and any important business logic.
9. Report features – Drill-through, drill-down, slicers, bookmarks, field parameters, tooltips, navigation, conditional formatting, etc.
10. Security – RLS/OLS, security roles, Entra ID groups, workspace permissions, and who can access/build/export data.
11. Performance – Known performance issues, expensive visuals/measures, large tables/high-cardinality columns, and whether Performance Analyzer or other optimization tools have been used.
12. Formatting and UX standards – Themes, colors, fonts, page layouts, accessibility, and naming conventions.
13. Workspaces and environments – Number of workspaces and Dev/Test/Prod setup.
14. Deployment process – Deployment pipelines, PBIP/PBIR, Git/Azure DevOps/GitHub, and how changes are promoted to production.
15. Users and permissions – Whether users are consumers only or also create reports using the semantic model.
16. Distribution strategy – Power BI Apps, direct sharing, embedded reports, Teams/SharePoint, subscriptions, etc.
17. Dependencies – Other reports, dashboards, semantic models, dataflows, Power Automate flows, Excel files, or external applications depending on this solution.
18. Documentation – Existing technical documentation, data dictionary, KPI definitions, architecture diagrams, and support procedures.
19. Ownership and support – Business owner, technical owner, support contact, and change-approval process.
20. Known issues / technical debt – Current limitations, manual processes, workarounds, and planned changes.

One area I would definitely add to your original list is Security (RLS/OLS and permissions), because this can have a significant impact when taking ownership of an existing Power BI solution.

I would also include Performance and Dependencies, since understanding how the report works is not enough—you also need to know what other solutions may be affected when making changes.

This would give you a good end-to-end understanding of the business, data, semantic model, report, security, performance, deployment, and support aspects of the existing Power BI reports.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Your list is already strong. Since you're doing knowledge transfer / understanding of existing Power BI reports, I would add a few areas around security, dependencies, performance, deployment, and support.

Additional questions I recommend

Data Flow / Architecture

What is the end-to-end data flow from source → ETL/Dataflow → Semantic Model → Report → App?

Are there any intermediate staging layers?

Data Gateway

Is an On-premises Data Gateway being used?

Which data sources depend on the gateway?

Who owns/maintains the gateway?

Security

Is Row-Level Security (RLS) or Object-Level Security (OLS) implemented?

How are users/roles maintained?

Are there any sensitivity labels or data protection policies?

Dependencies

Does the report depend on other reports, semantic models, dataflows, pipelines, notebooks, stored procedures, APIs, etc.?

Are there any upstream/downstream dependencies?

Performance

What are the current performance issues, if any?

Have Performance Analyzer, DAX Studio, or other tools been used?

Which visuals/measures are expensive?

What is the semantic model size?

Refresh & Failure Handling

What is the refresh schedule?

How long does refresh normally take?

What happens when refresh fails?

Is there any alert/notification mechanism?

Are there dependencies between refreshes?

Deployment / ALM

What is the deployment process between Development → Test/UAT → Production?

Are Deployment Pipelines being used?

Is there a separate workspace for each environment?

Who approves production deployments?

Capacity / Licensing

Is the solution on Power BI Pro, Premium Per User, Fabric Capacity, or Power BI Embedded?

What capacity is being used?

Are there any capacity/performance limitations?

Data Quality

Are there known data-quality issues?

How are duplicates, missing values, invalid records, and reconciliation issues handled?

Is there a reconciliation process between Power BI and the source system?

Business Logic

Which calculations are business-critical?

Are KPI definitions documented?

Are there any calculations whose logic comes from the business rather than the source system?

Usage / Adoption

Who are the main users?

How frequently is the report used?

Which pages/visuals are most important?

Is usage/audit information being monitored?

Maintenance & Ownership

Who is the technical owner?

Who is the business owner?

Who handles incidents and change requests?

How are enhancements requested and approved?

Known Issues / Future Plans

What known issues exist?

Any technical debt?

Any planned migration, redesign, or replacement?

Any upcoming changes to the data source or business requirements?

Hi powerbiexpert22​ 

We would like to inquire whether have you got the chance to check the solutions provided by other users in community to resolve the issue. We hope the information provided helps to clear the query. Should you have any further queries, kindly feel free to contact the Microsoft Fabric community.

Good points in both replies above. A couple of other things I'd probably check are hidden pages, synced slicers, bookmarks, tooltip pages and visual interactions, as these can sometimes affect the report in ways that aren't obvious just from looking through the main pages.

I'd also capture a few trusted baseline numbers before making any changes, for example revenue for a known period, row counts or customer counts. This can be really useful later when changing the model or report because you have something simple to compare against and can quickly spot if anything has changed unexpectedly.

Usage metrics are worth checking too. It can save a lot of time if you know which pages and reports people actually use, and which ones are basically no longer being looked at.

Good list, itcovers most of the essentials. A few things I'd add to round it out:

Security

• RLS/OLS implemented? Static or dynamic, how many roles?

Environment

• Storage mode mix — Import, DirectQuery, Composite, or Direct Lake?
• Licensing — Pro, PPU, Premium capacity, or Fabric capacity?
• On-prem gateway involved?
• Deployment pipelines (Dev/Test/Prod)?

Performance

• Any known performance issues? Has Performance Analyzer/DAX Studio been used to profile?
• Is query folding happening in the M queries?

Governance

• Certified/Promoted endorsement status?
• Naming conventions documented?
• Clear report owner and change-management process?

Usage

• Usage metrics — who's actually using these and how often?
• App workspace vs individual workspace for distribution?v

Hi powerbiexpert22​,

Your checklist is a strong starting point. It covers the report and semantic-model internals quite well.

I would add another layer around ownership, dependencies, reliability, security and actual usage, because those are usually the areas that become important when taking over an existing Power BI solution.

A few questions I would add:

16. Who owns the solution from both a business and technical perspective? Is there a named business owner for KPI definitions and a technical owner/support contact?
17. What are the upstream and downstream dependencies? Which data sources, dataflows, semantic models, reports, apps or other artifacts depend on each other? Power BI's Lineage view is very useful for this.
18. How are connections and refreshes configured? Check refresh schedule and history, gateway/cloud connections, credentials, M parameters, refresh duration, failures and any expected refresh SLA. The semantic model settings expose most of this information.
19. What is the complete security model? I would review workspace roles, report/semantic-model permissions, Build permission, RLS/OLS, app audiences, sensitivity labels, external sharing and who owns the data-source credentials.
20. What are the known performance bottlenecks? In addition to model size and DAX complexity, I would check high-cardinality columns, relationship design, query folding, slow visuals and any capacity pressure. Performance Analyzer is useful for identifying which visuals and queries are actually expensive.
21. How is the solution being used today? Which reports and pages are actively used, who the main consumers are, and whether any reports are obsolete or duplicated. The Power BI usage metrics can help here.
22. What data-quality or reconciliation checks exist? Are totals reconciled back to the source systems, and are there known exceptions, manual adjustments or business rules that are not obvious from the model?
23. How are environments and deployments handled? Is there Dev/Test/Prod separation, deployment pipelines, PBIP/Git source control, parameters or deployment rules for environment-specific connections?
24. What is the recovery/change-management strategy? Is the original PBIX/PBIP available, is Version History being used, and is there a documented release/rollback process?
25. Are there any usability or accessibility requirements? For example mobile layouts, accessibility, subscriptions, exports, drillthrough behaviour, tooltips and navigation patterns.

I normally work through an existing solution in roughly this order:

business purpose and owners
-> lineage and source systems
-> semantic model and business logic
-> refresh and security
-> report behaviour and performance
-> usage/adoption
-> deployment, support and recovery

That usually gives a good picture of not only how the report was built, but also how safely it can be changed without breaking something upstream or downstream.

Your existing checklist plus these operational/governance questions would make a very solid report-assessment template.

AI-assisted drafting: AI was used to help structure and phrase this response. I reviewed and validated the technical content before posting.