Combining multiple pbix data sets

[BigKev]

Hi All,

I’m just wondering if it is possible to do this in the latest release of Power BI.

So currently, three developers are working on reporting 60 measures coming from different sources. We decide to divide into +/- 20 measures for each developer based on the same source system, and each developer will create the visualization on a separate pbix file, which mean there will be a three separate data model

As the end - product is an app, this is not an issue, as we can combine multiple pbix file into one app. We decided to minimize the number of pages in one pbix files to avoid performance problem and to speed up the development time.

The problem come when creating a summary page, which is the high-level view of the current month actual, target, and variance for each measure. We have successfully created a dax queries that pull the latest month number in one pbix file as we want to automate as much as possible. However, we could not find a way to pull the number from other pbix files automatically.

We have explored Power BI shared data set. However, you can only pull one data set in one pbix file, and we currently have three separate data sets.

Does anyone have any experience with this issue? Or know any workaround?

Please Help.

Happy to chat in more details if required.

Cheers,
Kev

[v-cazheng-msft]

Hi @BigKev 

Is your problem solved?

Best Regards

Caiyun Zheng

[HarishKM]

@BigKev  Hey Refer this blog.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Power-BI-gt-How-to-easily-copy-Measures-from-one-pbi...

The answer to that is really to work within a Workspace within the Service. You can't do everything you can do in the Desktop when doing this but this is the method of collaborating with a single "PBIX" by more than one person.

Try that as well .

Hope this work for you 

[v-cazheng-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @BigKev 

With the latest version of Power BI Desktop(Version: 2.91.884.0 64-bit (March 2021)), you can connect to multiple Power BI datasets. Calculated columns and Measures of these datasets will be reserved as the following picture. These Calculated columns will have icons as general columns. Measures will reserve their original icons. You can combine your pbix datasets by the feature.

For how to connect multiple shared datasets, you can refer this official blog DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and its update in March 2021.

Best Regards

Caiyun Zheng

Is that the answer you're looking for? If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[amitchandak]

@BigKev , I think after Dec -2020, few changes have allowed multiple live datasets. Not sure that is applicable for this case.

refer: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-december-2020-feature-summary/#_Toc58831296

But my advice would be to consolidate the data model