Data Model Solution Advice

[helen_brunyee95]

Hi All,

I am looking for some advice/confirmation that I have the right solution to a Data Model/Access scenerio.

I'm the Data Analyst for my company & currently run/build the majority of our Power BI reporting, for most departments, from our "Golden Dataset" which I built & now maintain. This Golden Dataset approach has worked brilliantly for us so far & is used for reporting across the business.

However, we have now reached the scenario where the finance department are wanting access to various data, with lots of finance-specific datasources/queiries/measures, so that a) we can build Power BI reports from them and b) so that the finance team can 'self-serve' via Power BI web, point to this finance data & create quick adhoc reports/export tables.

I have spent hours looking into various data solutions on Power BI, including DataFlows & DataMart, but neither seem to work for this scenario.

So I guess my question is - would it just be best for me to build a seperate "Finance Golden Dataset" for them, and publish to web, so that they can point to this for themselves to produce ad-hoc exports (e.g having a blank report set up for them, which they can go in and pull a quick table visual together, using the Finance GD tables, to then export to their spreadsheets)? OR, is there another solution I don't know about, that might be better?

If the answer is a Finance Golden Dataset, what would be best practice in terms of giving the finance team access/permissions on the web, to self-serve?

Any advice/suggesttions greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[audreygerred · Accepted solution]

Hi! To give teams self-serve capability you will just have to make sure your model is set up with any data they need and measures (they can dd measures themselves, but if you want a single source of truth, it is best that the measures be in your model - also, they are re-useable for everyone then). Then, make sure anyone who will need self-service has a pro license. Finally, grant them build access on the necessary semantic model. When they go into Power BI desktop, they will click Get data then select Power BI semantic models. The pop up screen will display any semantic model they have bild access on and they can connect to that.

[helen_brunyee95]

Thank you so much for your reply and confirming! That is super useful - appreciate it 🙂

[audreygerred]

You are very welcome! Happy to help!