Forum Discussion
Helper Ichanging linked PBI model data source from desktop
It looks like this has been fixed with the August release Desktop using generally released Power BI Service. Now you can edit your query properties and change connections to another workspace and/or model.
Was the original data model file created in Desktop and then published? If you did that, go back to the original .pbix and make your changes there. When you re-publish, those changes should flow to all the reports that use that data model as their source.
Helper IThe original data model was created in desktop but we have several different data models that we have loaded to a workspace. One for spine, one for cardiac, one for oncology, etc. I don't build the report WITHIN the data model file itself, I go to a new pbix file from desktop, use Power BI Service as a data source, go to the workspace and connect to the cardiac model. I probably do this for 5 or 6 different types of reports that I want to build off of cardiac. Then when i want to switch those 5 or 6 reports to point to spine, i cannot edit the query for the data source to do so.
Oh, so you have several similar data models for different departments, and you want to create essentially identical reports for each one? Create one report, then switch the source and have it pick up the same shape of data from a different place? I don't think that's possible. If it were me, I'd have created one big master data model that has all the departments so that I could create a report that was filtered on something like DepartmentTable[DepartmentName] = "Spine" for instance to DepartmentTable[DepartmentName] ="Cardiac".
The only workaround I can think of is to create one report and save it as a template file, then connect a copy of that to a new source. I have no idea if this would work; I haven't used templates before. But it might be worth a try.Edit: it would seem I have misunderstood how template files work. Nevermind.- sbroaden
Yes, unfortunately our models by 'department' are large as is. Each one is almost 2GB so creating one large one wasn't an option as performance was bad. I will give the template a try, i haven't worked with those much either. I am hoping that down the road they fix the option to switch which model you are connected to similar to how it works with SSAS.
In my quick test I was unable to use templates the way I described. Maybe I'm missing something but it looks like it is not a solution.