Development / Quality / Production - Mangement of PowerBI Development objects

[npowerbi]

Hi All,

I am new to PowerBI and the background I come from usually has 3 systems in the landscape viz Dev / QA and Prod.

I would like to know how do we manage the same in PowerBI. To me PowerBI service seems like a production server. However I am not sure how do people manage their development objects and send it to quality for tests and move it to production.

This is what I understand so far in Power BI in terms of 2 step development workflow.

1. Develop your Dashboards or Reports in Power BI Desktop (PBIX) file local to you machine.

2. Publish the same to Power BI Service -

Also I do not see any version control option in PBIX files. Is there any specific way in which we manage VC in PowerBI?

Appreciate your help in advance, if someone can explain different types of landscapes possible in PowerBI. TIA.

Nitin

[TomMartens]

Hey @npowerbi,

currently there is nothing that really adresses the topics you mentioned, but things will change in the not so distant future:

Please have a look at the ALM toolkit for Power BI  from MAQ Software (alos an avid provider of custom visuals):
https://maqsoftware.com/case-studies/alm-toolkit

During the Business Application Summit this year MSFT mentioned that they will integrate the PBI development with VSTS, but currently there is no timeline.

For larger development projects, we are using different workspaces for the different stages and utilize PowerShell Scripts to move artefacts between these stages

1. Develop Reports using Power BI Desktop -> publish to DEV workspace -> Add Dashboards --> copy to ACC/INT workspace using PS

2. test --> copy  to PRD workspace

Regards,
Tom 

[rowlandshaw]

Do you know if there is anything we can do to influence the integration with VSTS, er, Azure DevOps?

[npowerbi]

Thanks a ton Tom for your detailed reply.

I got everything except copy to ACC/INT workspace using PS

How can we use PowerShell Script to move the artefacts between workspaces? Putting my understanding of your suggested workflow and doubts.

1. Develop the report using PowerBI Desktop
2. Create Dev / QA and Prod workspaces in Power BI Service.
3. Pulish the report to Dev Workspace for Unit testing. Dev and QA workspaces will be shared with only development teams
4. I am lost here. I am not sure how to use PowerScript to move PBIX file from Development workspace to Quality Workspace or for that matter production workspace. What does the PowerScript move? PBIX file?
5. Also how about versioning?

Can you please elaborate little more over here? Any samples of PowerScript you are referring to?

[TomMartens]

Hey,

here you will find the Power Shell scripts that have been the foundation for our scripts, unfortunately I can't share our code right now:

https://github.com/Azure-Samples/powerbi-powershell

Especially the CopyWorkspace script contains a lot of what we have been reused.

General thinking behind the workfllow

DEV handsover list of reports/dashboards and datasets ready for ACCeptance

ACC copies the artefacts from DEV to ACC

ACC handsover list of reports/dashboards and datasets ready for PRoDuction

PRD copies the artefacts from ACC to PRD

Currently we are omitting versioning of artefacts, because we use the simplified versioning of PBIX file by using onedrive features, and we are waiting of the integration into VSTFS that MSFT mentioned during the Business Application Summit.

You can also download a PBIX file programmatically using Power Shell, you might consider this PBIX files as foundation for you artifacts.

Regards,

Tom