Forum Discussion
Report builder transformations
Report Builder has very limited transformation capabilities compared to Power BI Desktop - it only supports basic Power Query operations in preview.
Best approach: Do all your transformations in Power BI Desktop first, then connect Report Builder to the processed dataset for paginated reporting.
Report Builder is designed for formatting, not data transformation.
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Jainesh Poojara | Power BI Developer
Thankyou, jaineshp, Cookistador, for your responses.
Hi powerbiexpert22,
We appreciate your inquiry through the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
To the best of my understanding, Power BI Report Builder is intended for paginated report layout and rendering rather than comprehensive data shaping. It does not include the full Power Query transformation engine found in Power BI Desktop, consequently, complex transformations cannot be performed within Report Builder.
For transformation requirements, you may consider the following options:
- Use Power BI Dataflows in the Power BI service to prepare and transform data online using the Power Query interface. Once the dataflow is configured, connect Report Builder directly to it as a dataset source. This approach enables reuse of the same transformation logic across both Power BI Desktop and Report Builder.
- Perform transformations at the source level for systems such as SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Analysis Services, etc., so that data is already in the desired shape before being consumed by Report Builder.
Please refer to the following link for further information:
Utilize Power BI Semantic Model within Power BI Re... - Microsoft Fabric Community
We hope that the information provided will help resolve the issue. Should you have any further queries, please feel free to contact the Microsoft Fabric Community.
Thank you.