topic Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview) in Service

Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 19:32:55 GMT

Hit Reply to tell us what you think about the new Data Model Editing in the Power BI Service feature so we can continue to improve.

For example:

What changes would you like to see?
If you turned off the Workspace level preview switch, why?
If you turned off the admin switch, why?
Any suggestions for additional settings or capabilities?

Thanks,

-Power BI team

To read more about the feature see the announcement in the Power BI Product Blog

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

AlexisOlson — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 20:59:14 GMT

This is a great feature but I'm not sure how to include it in a source control workflow. Does anyone have suggestions?

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

JoeCronk — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 11:44:40 GMT

I'm not seeing the option to turn this feature on in our workspaces. Has this been fully released yet?

Edit your data model in the Power BI Service (Preview) | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

Jellbrae — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 06:38:48 GMT

"As you make changes to your data model, your changes will be automatically saved. Changes will be permanent with no option to undo."

Is the "undo" feature (eg. like the applied steps in Query Mode but then on a higher level) still to come in the next few weeks or months or is it something that is not considered?

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:35:34 GMT

This has been released to all regions. Are you still not seeing this feature for your workspace? If so what type of workspace are you testing and in what region? The one thing to be aware of is not all datasets in pro workspaces are yet fully supported in the following regions. Information about this limitation will regularly be updated in our documentation found here: https://learn.microsoft.com...
Brazil South
Canada Central
Central US
East US
East US 2
India Central
Japan East
North Central US
North Europe
South Africa North
South Central US
Southeast Asia
UAE North
UK South
West US
West US 2

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:40:12 GMT

We are investigating various source control options for upcoming releases. One related capability we are investigating is supporting version history for datasets in the service. Would version history address your highest priority source control needs? I am interested in learning more about what functionality is most important to you for source control with editing data models!

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:46:11 GMT

The capability to revert a data model to a previous point in time is something we are investigating supporting for future milestones. This type of functionality will realistically take time to implement and will not land in the near future. Do you anticipate needing to "undo" changes regularly? Do you anticipate wanting to do this more in a single session using functionality like Ctrl+Z, or across sessions using functionality such as version history? We are interested in learning more about your feedback on this topic!

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

hannibalmads — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 08:49:02 GMT

I would turn it off as long as there is no version control, no undo, no save. You risk losing your work in an instant. At least you can save/discard while editing the report layout (the visuals) in the service. For the dataset this is a no go in my opinion.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 15:29:41 GMT

Thank you for the feedback! This is helpful to know that no option for version control, undo, or save will prevent you from adopting this feature. These are scenarios we are actively investigating for future improvements, and feedback like this is helpful as we continue to improve this experience.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

AlexisOlson — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:34:28 GMT

My priority is to have fine grain control over what changes get deployed. With the desktop version, I can tinker around and choose not to save or not to publish any changes. I always do a diff on the TMSL folder structure version of my model and review any changes before I republish an important model.

In contrast, any changes made in the service are automatically immediately applied without any review steps. This fundamentally changes the workflow. I think it might work if I'm editing a model in the dev workspace of a deployment pipeline (so that changes can be reviewed before deploying to test and prod) but I haven't yet experimented with this.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 17:03:00 GMT

This is helpful feedback thank you! One thing to be aware of is for the preview is one current limitation is that we don't support datasets that have been deployed by a deployment pipeline, so you currently will not be able to experiment with editing data models in a deployment pipeline. More information on our limitations can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/transform-model/service-edit-data-models#considerations-and-limitations

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

Kaze — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 01:04:23 GMT

Thank you so much for the wonderful update! I've been waiting for this feature for long time since it was announced in the release plan.

While this is a very promising feature, it doesn't actually solve a problem I was expecting this feature to solve. That is, once I upload a dataset to the Power BI Service and modify it via XMLA endpoint or set incremental refresh, there's no way to edit the data model other than through 3rd party tools (like Tabular Editor or ALM Toolkit). These types of datasets are no longer downloadable as pbix files, and it's actually preferable because as an IT team I don't want users to be able to download the datasets that contain a lot of confidential data (close to 1GB in size) so easily, but I DO want them to be able to define new measures or calculated columns as they need for their business, without using 3rd party tools and XMLA tools that require learning technical skills. If this feature is applicable to these types of datasets, it will reduce a lot of the pain I have in managing datasets.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 02:27:22 GMT

Thank you for this feedback! We currently do not support editing data models in the Service that have been modified via XMLA endpoint or have incremental refresh. However, hearing feedback like this on scenarios that are important to users like you is helpful as we make plans and priorities for future capabilities for this experience.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

hannibalmads — Tue, 02 May 2023 08:53:32 GMT

Let me emphasize that while I enjoy the concept of editing the data model in the browser, the feature of "As you make changes to your data model, your changes will be automatically saved. Changes will be permanent with no option to undo." is so counter intuitive and counter productive. OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint all have an automatically save but with the additional Version History. Without that, what you get is save without backup!

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

Fowmy — Tue, 09 May 2023 10:47:11 GMT

hi emlisa

I am excited to try this out!

I enbaled the feature as instructed yet, the option "Open Data Model" is disabled for me.

My region is West Europe (Netherlands)

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Tue, 09 May 2023 15:08:09 GMT

I am glad to hear that you are excited to try this out! I suspect that the dataset you are trying to test falls under one of our limitations and that is why the 'Open data model' button is disabled. You can see a full list of our limitations for this experience here in our documentation: Edit data models in the Power BI service (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

To see which limitation your dataset falls under you can do the following steps:

Hover over the Open data model button in the dataset details page. This displays a tooltip indicating which limitation is causing the Open data model button to be disabled.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

Fowmy — Wed, 10 May 2023 09:12:16 GMT

emlisa

Thanks for the clarification. The limitation in my model is that I have applied incremental refresh ☹️

So, when can we expect these limitations to be lifted?

Datasets that have incremental refresh.
Datasets that have been deployed by a deployment pipeline.
Datasets modified by an XMLA endpoint.
Datasets that haven't yet been upgraded to enhanced metadata format. You can upgrade to enhanced metadata format by opening the corresponding pbix in Desktop and republishing.
Datasets that have automatic aggregations configured.
Datasets that have a live connection.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

GabrielSantos — Thu, 11 May 2023 19:55:58 GMT

Here's what I was hoping this feature would be able to do.

Enable effective parallel development on the dataset layer. We currently use Tabular Editor desktop version for versioning, but parallel development is still a challenge because we can't perform all required tasks solely with Tabular Editor (adding new tables, defining relationships, etc.). Therefore, we perform these tasks in Power BI Desktop and serialize the model. This is a major bottleneck for parallel development because any change a developer does on the .PBIX renders the other developer's .PBIX out of date, and there's no effective way to pull a .PBIX while retaning any changes you may have made.
Support self-service report authors in inspecting the model relationships without having to use Power BI desktop. While there is an ability to author reports directly in the Power BI service, this functionality is severely limited with any degree of model complexity. Not being able to inspect the model relationsihps introduces confusion to the end users as they may inadvertantly create a visual with invalid relationships. As there is no way to inspect the relationships in the service, our users have to install and user Power BI Desktop.

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Fri, 12 May 2023 16:49:03 GMT

There are a lot of improvements we are working on for this experience to support additional scenarios and remove limitations. Removing these limitations will be technically difficult to implement and will take time, because of this realistically these limitations will not land soon. However, removing these limitations is on our radar and is something we are long-term working towards. Feedback like what you shared is helpful in shaping our roadmap, thank you!

Re: Share your thoughts on the new data model editing in the Power BI service feature (preview)

emlisa — Fri, 12 May 2023 19:55:08 GMT

Thank you for the feedback! It is helpful to hear what scenarios are most important to you.

1. We support mutple authors editing the same data model with this preview which is a first step towards helping address parallel development. It is helpful for us to know that parallel developement is something important to you!

2. Our previous allows users to view all relationships for their model by opening the data model associated with the report. Report authors can see all the model relationships within the service without having to open desktop as long as they have contributor access to the dataset.

Hope this helps! Thank you again for taking the time to share what scenarios you are most important to you!