Developing power bi on desktop vs cloud

[Anonymous]

New user here....

Is the best way to develop Power BI reports on the Desktop? Can you sign in and develop on the cloud? is the functionality the same?

Thanks,

Z

[Greg_Deckler]

Generally Desktop. In the Cloud you have much of the same functionality to create reports, but you cannot change the data model by adding custom columns, measures, etc.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response.

What advantage would there be to using the cloud version?

Can you upload apps from desktop to the cloud? or download from cloud to the desktop?

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

The cloud allows you to share your work with other people, create dashboards, setup subscriptions and alerts. Remember, it really isn't about Desktop or Cloud because they are both free. Desktop is always Free and there is a free version of using the Cloud Service as well. So, you really don't have to choose. 

Generally, what you do is create the data model and reports in Desktop. You upload those to the cloud as the reference model. Often, in enterprises you are going to do this in an App Workspace and create an App for it. Now, when you share this out, other users can create their own reports from that data in the Cloud Service. 

And yes, you can connect Desktop live to a data model in the Cloud Service.