Tip: How to change credentials for reports having Live Connection to Power BI Dataset

[prateekraina]

I have come across that several people in an organization use their own organizational accounts to create power bi reports and then publish on their individual accounts. This is a really bad practice as in case the employee leaves the organization, the content will go away with the person. It is highly recommended to use a dedicated service account for your projects.

This blog post mentions the steps required to resolve this issue in case above situation occurs.

Scenario:

You have a Master PBIX file where you have pulled data from various data sources, modelled, created measures and relationships. This file is inetened to be used as a dataset and is hosted on Power BI Service.

Then you have several PBIX files (Child) which are connected live to this Power BI dataset where you have created your visualizations and hosted them as well on Power BI Service. This helps in limiting the dataset at one place instead of duplicating it if the dataset is going to be same for multiple reports.

At some point in time you leave the organization and these files are passed on to the next developer. It is going to be a bad time for him/her as the pbix will give error if not opened with same credentials.

Resolution:

1. Open Power BI Desktop.
2. Switch to new credentials inside Power BI Desktop.
3. Open Master report(s) and Publish to an App Workspace on Power BI service.
4. Open Child report, it willl give error saying Unable to connect.
5. Click on Edit.
6. Select the Master dataset published in Step 3. Click on Load.
7. That’s it, the child report will load fine.
8. Publish the child report to Power BI Service.
9. Repeat from Step 4 for all other Child Reports.

-Prateek Raina

[v-frfei-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @prateekraina ,

Thanks for sharing the solution 🙂