Automating DTAP publishing and data source switching with the .pbip/pbir previews?

[jj_at_hu]

Hello there,

We'd like to be able to publish reports/semantic models to different workspaces and have the data source update accordingly and automatically. We'd love it if we could somehow link this to trigger on commits, via task flows, functions, code or some other solution. I'm having a hard time finding current documentation (probably because .pbip and .pbir are still in preview; love the changes btw!). Is there any way to achieve this? Will there be in the future?

Context:

When publishing a semantic model or report (info product) to a different workspace we need to change the data source and publish the info product to its new workspace (running DTAP workspaces and data sources). This manual task is error-prone and we'd like to automate/streamline it. To complicate matters we're switching to the preview .pbip and .pbir formats so we can do version control in azure devops, meaning not all .pbix functions of the REST api are available. 

Limitations I encountered so far:

- You can't programmatically publish .pbip projects from desktop to the REST api

- You can't programmatically convert .pbip projects to .pbix format

- Task flows can't publish semantic models

Looking forward to your answer,

Jeroen

[v-xuxinyi-msft]

Hi @jj_at_hu 

Do you need to use semantic models across workspaces? Please check if this document meets your needs.

Introduction to semantic models across workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Create reports based on semantic models from different workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,
Yulia Xu

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[jj_at_hu · Accepted solution]

Hey Yulia,

thanks for the reply. I'm looking for ways to publish reports and/or semantic models to multiple workspaces programmatically, so by sending a REST request to the API. These sources, while helpful, only contain information on doing this manually. I've been reading some more and I'm coming to the conclusion that what I need is possible, but only if we upgrade to fabric.

We'll look into switching to fabric (it looks really interesting), in the meantime we're implementing a solution that'll get us by until then. Thanks for the help!