Share your thoughts on Power BI Project files (PBIP) and Fabric Git Integration

[RuiRomanoMS]

Hit Reply to tell us about your experience with Power BI Project files (PBIP) and Fabric Git Integration for Power BI Semantic Models and Reports so we can continue to improve.

For example:

• What changes would you like to see?
• What are your main challenges/issues?
• Any suggestions for additional settings or capabilities?

Thanks,

-Power BI team

[DevopsPls]

Continuous deployment from Azure Devops (with PBIP) to dev workspaces is the most important planned feature for me.

I see there is some progress there with the new API and pipeline scripts, but I am unwilling to implement preview features across the enterprise.

[jmarciogsousa]

• Hi,
  
  Congrats for the solution.

• Could be great one interface or VS Code extention that solves are the project relations and dependencies automatic like we have the VS Code MS SQL project.

Spoiler

For my use case I would like to create one dataset and publish programatic using pbip template/base project without use the powerbi app or workspace.

• Could be great improve the doc to expalin the logic for the TMDL Language, we have for example "LocalDateTable_caedc611..." that are created in definition that and we don't have documentation for understand.

Or The defenition of columns notation and options:

The doc available don't provid it:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/projects/projects-overview
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/projects/projects-dataset

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks for the feedback.

About PBIP deployment, you may use the new Fabric APIs:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/fabric/articles/item-management/item-management-overview

Example using PowerShell: https://github.com/microsoft/Analysis-Services/tree/master/pbidevmode/fabricps-pbip

About the local date tables, they are not specific to TMDL. They show up in your model due to the AutoDatetime feature enabled for your model: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-auto-date-time

[bsmucker]

Hi @RuiRomanoMS ,

Our biggest limitation when using the .pbip format is that there does not seem to be a way to broadcast new or updated semantic models across a large number of enterprise workspaces in an app-owns-data embedded solution using the Fabric APIs.

Currently, service principals cannot call the Fabric - Core - Git APIs, so we are unable to programatically create workspaces and initialize them to a Git branch. Workspaces are also limited to one Power BI deployment pipeline stage, and therefore one deployment pipeline, so even having a source workspace from which we deploy content to hundreds of workspaces is serialized.

Combined with the fact that modifying a semantic model through the XMLA endpoint via a third-party tool like Tabular Editor results in exporting to a .pbix failing, we are struggling to find a way to deploy the .pbip format at scale.

Are there any updates on the horizon for enabling service principal and service principal profile support for Git APIs or lifting the one workspace-to-one pipeline limitation? We would love to continue using the .pbip format in our CI/CD process, but dropping and re-publishing a .pbix seems to be the way to go at the moment.

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks for your feedback.

It is possible to use Fabric REST APIs to deploy PBIP using Service Principals. But for now only reports and semantic models are supported, see these examples:

Analysis-Services/pbidevmode/fabricps-pbip at master · microsoft/Analysis-Services (github.com)
Deploy a Power BI project using Fabric APIs - Microsoft Fabric REST APIs | Microsoft Learn

[bsmucker]

Hi Rui,

Thank you for referring me to this resource. I was confused when I saw this at first because the Item Overview - Power BI table made me think that it wouldn't be possible to update a semantic model's properties or definition once deployed.

This looks like it could meet our needs. I do still have some concerns about scalability, 429 errors, and parallelization when it comes to updating semantic model properties because it is writing out to the file.

Are there any plans to allow service principal profile support? What about lifting the one workspace-to-one-pipeline limitation or letting service principals call the Fabric Git APIs?

[lbendlin]

LocalDateTable entry are an indication that you forgot to disable Auto Date/Time. They should never be part of an enterprise semantic model.

[UNIheve]

Hi

We have a lot of reports connected live to on-prem ssas (Fabric is on the road map)

I would like to add the report-part of these files into source control, and I think I succeded with it yesterday.

I save the thin report as pbip > commit to devops repo > connect from workspace to repo.

But trying the setup from scatch again today, when I click on Update all in the workspace I just get: Failed to discover dependencies ... Azure Analysis Services and SQL Server Analysis Services hosted semantic models are not supported....

Is it possible?

@RuiRomanoMS 

[RuiRomanoMS]

We are working to support the AS/AAS scenario. Until then of all you want to source control the thin reports, if you live connect the report to the model in the service and not to Analsysis Services it should work because the connection in definition.pbir will be to the model in the workspace and not to Analysis Services. I believe the error you get its because the connection in definition.pbir is to the Analysis Services server. Can you confirm?

[UNIheve]

Great that you are working on it.

Yes, I can confirm. There is no model in the service, I can connect to, as the reports are connected through a gateway to on-prem SSAS. So I have saved the AS connected PBIX as a PBIP, and get the error when I try to sync from Azure DevOps repo into an empty workspace. The definition.pbir connectionString is pointing at the SSAS server.

[AlexisOlson]

Please allow an option for more granular serialization to represent measures as distinct TMDL files rather than part of a larger table definition. This makes maintaining measures simpler.

I currently do this with TE3 folder structure in JSON format and can't switch to TMDL until this level of granularity is possible.

[RuiRomanoMS]

Its in our backlog, but not a priority. Can you please log a new idea on aka.ms/fabricideas?

[v-yangliu-msft]

Hi  @RuiRomanoMS ,

What changes would you like to see?

I hope the UI interface is more concise and clear, and the synchronization of Git integration can be more real-time and convenient

What are your main challenges/issues?

The synchronization steps of Git integration are a bit cumbersome, and sometimes there are some restrictions

Any suggestions for additional settings or capabilities?

I hope to broaden the compatibility and support for synchronization of certain unsupported workspace items (especially fabric-related items).

Best Regards,

Liu Yang

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