Can an existing Power BI report be a data source to another Power BI report

[Anonymous]

The provincial government creates Power BI reports that are live and pull data from a server. Getting access to the reports is restricted because it contains data for all regions, but I download the data from our region and replicate the KPI tracking in Power BI reports for all staff at our organization.

However, this is done on a monthly basis. I would prefer to have the data refreshing daily. Is there a way to use a Power BI service report as a data source for another Power BI desktop report? 

I'm assuming no, but want to confirm.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

A report can never be a data source. A Semantic model can be a data source. 

You can treat the semantic model as a SSAS source (SSAS Tabular to be precise) for a live cube connection, or you can use DAX to export data.

Every report visual runs a  DAX query against the underlying Semantic Model.  You can do the same.  You can do that with Power Automate or Powershell or whatever tool can run DAX queries.  Existing security like RLS is observed.

[Anonymous]

Hi Vicky, this is really helpful.

Does the semantic model have to be one published to your workspaces? The reports from the province are not in my workspace or organization?

Is there a way to make a semantic model published by other organization part of my workspace? 

[vicky_]

I don't have any personal experience with that part. But if you are able to get access (i.e either the other organisation is on PowerBI Premium or they give your account Build / edit permissions) - then i think it should work. This page goes into more details on how the other organisation can give said permissions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-datasets-build-permissions

[vicky_]

Yes maybe? I'm not sure if this solves your situation, but give it a read: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-report-lifecycle-datasets