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

[Amm5061]

Hi @RuiRomanoMS, 

I've been watching the git integration release and the updates to make Power BI files to be more collaboration friendly with a lot of eager anticipation. Unfortunately as a govcloud user, we see in the documentation that the git integration features are not supported on sovereign clouds at this time.  Any idea when that feature may make it over to us?

Thanks!

[JakeDuddy]

Love the feature, but ran into an issue with a bubble chart. Did a Fabric Item API deployment but got this error for this visual "Couldn't load the data for the visual" error. Converting to table shows and it showed all the data, also recreating the visual in the service was successful.

[JakeDuddy]

Figured out this was related to the same measure being referenced in both the tooltip and x-axis.

[andyclap]

Great to see this - while it's been a bit of a frustrating journey, I think you're on the right route with the new report serialization.

It's really helping me diff & merge changes from multiple contributors sensibly in git.

I submitted a survey feedback, but will repost here as I'd be interested in the team's feedback.

For me the main use-case is for branch & merge in git. A report should be easily diffable with cohesive file changes, i.e. at the page level. It might be because we have lots of filters on each page, but splitting every visual on each page out into a separate obscurely named subfolder + json file makes this a bit clumsy for my scenario, and doesn't work as nicely with diff+merge.

At the page level, is it possible to make a canonical folder name from the pages' names rather than use their IDs? The commit is very hard to navigate if you have no clue what each file/folder relates to.

The json also seems a bit verbose. Did you consider structuring so that the boiler plate for the majority single-value use-case is minimal. I see a lot of arrays of "property" elements representing properties and "literal" elements representing literals. Would it be practical to have a small string grammar for common references, especially [Source.Field]?

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks for the feedback!
We cannot easily use display names because those can be duplicated and have invalid file chars. But we let you rename those files/folders and Desktop preserves them. Power BI Desktop project report folder - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
We know its hard to identify to which file the visual object relates to, and we plan to show the name property in Power BI Desktop.
In the future we will make simplifications to the JSON structure, specially for literal elements.

[andyclap]

Thanks - naming things is hard! Being able to name visuals ourselves from the PBI editor is perfect. I hope with a finalized schema we can build cool tools like a general rename refactor for GUIDs -> generated names ourselves.

Having a place to do that for pages too would be awesome (then folder name can just reflect that).

Keep it up with the json polishing, there's quite a lot of AST stuff in there that gets very verbose - As mentioned a little DSL for that might be much easier to track changes ... looking at filters especially!

[AkhilAshok]

It seems Page Type "Tooltip" doesn't seem to be getting captured in page.json of PBIR. 

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks, looks like a bug.

[ThePowerOfBI]

Hello

I like to see that I can use the PBIP file on my onedrive as it easier to share and more secure include versioning as well by SharePoint. In the moment, the PBIP file is not showing up for using it/open it...

I also like to test my PBIP I downloaded from Internet for scheme/design template.
And I like to have a better documentation for getting more the idea how I can use PBIP as theming environment.
Thanks in advance 😉

Cheers 

Michael

[andyclap]

If you like onedrive and sharepoint versioning ... wait to you see git!

[RuiRomanoMS]

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by using "PBIP as theming environment"? 

[ChristopheB]

I downloaded a pbix-report from a workspace (live connection to the dataset).
When I save this report as pbip, and then re-open it, I always get an error that the model cannot be loaded. Even when I re-connect this report to the online dataset, it still gives the same error after re-opening.

Is it not possible to save a report as pbip when it has a live connection to a dataset? 

[RuiRomanoMS]

Looks like a bug, save as PBIP is supported for live connect report.
Can you please open a support ticket?

[jol]

Hi Rui and team,

I've discovered a potential issue with reports saved using PBIP (this doesn't appear to be specific to the new PBIR format, it also applies to PBIR-Legacy).

I have a thin (live-connected) report that contains some report-level measures. When I save it as PBIP (PBIR or PBIR-Legacy), the "definition.pbir" file contains a "byConnection" dataset reference and not a "byPath" dataset reference. This is expected.

I then manually change the "definition.pbir" file to use a "byPath" dataset reference, pointing to the local copy (saved as PBIP) of the same semantic model that it is currently live-connected to in the service. Note that I am not currently using Fabric Git Integration. But I understand that this happens automatically when you sync a thin report to git, if it belongs to the same workspace as the semantic model it is live-connected to.

I now open the report in Power BI Desktop. As expected, it now opens as a report with a local editable semantic model, rather than as a live-connected report. This is potentially a really convenient new way to work on thin reports during stages of development where the semantic model is not yet fully stable.

In the Table, Model, and DAX Query views, the report-level measures don't show up. This makes sense, as these measures are not part of the semantic model.

In the Report view, the report-level measures do show up. However left-clicking one of these measures does not bring up the Measure tools ribbon tab or the DAX editor, as it does for model measures. Even worse, right-clicking one of these measures brings up an error message:

It would be great to have the ability to edit report-level mesures within reports that are open with a local model. It would be even better to be able to create new report-level measures, and even move measures back and forth between the report and the model.

However as a first step, it would be good to have it fail gracefully with a more informative error message!

Keen to hear what your thoughts are about this particular scenario. It appears to be an unforeseen consequence of allowing thin/live-connected reports to become paired with a pre-existing local model (this is clearly not a problem when you create a brand new local model with a DirectQuery connection to the original model, as any report-level measures can just become model measures in the new local model).

Might also be useful to know what Microsoft's plans are with report-level measures in general moving forward:

• Easy way to distinguish between report-level measures and model measures when editing a report? See Distinguish Report Level Measures from Measures in Dataset - Microsoft Fabric Idea
• Ability to write and edit report-level measures in the service? See Report-level measure in Power BI SERVICE - Microsoft Fabric Idea
• Inferred/implicit data types for report-level measures? Currently report-level measures have their data type set explicitly – and this data type defaults to Decimal number (Double). This is in contrast to the behaviour of model measures, where the data type always seems to be inferred (does the TOM even allow explicit data type declarations for measures?). If you're planning to serialize report-level measures in TMDL files in the future, you must be thinking about this! See Report Level Measures Data Type to default based on return value - Microsoft Fabric Idea

[alxdean]

We've experienced exactly the same issue. we're using Fabric Git integration and when cloning the repo locally we really appreciate how easy it is to work on thin reports now, as it passes through all changes to the local semantic model, but.... local measures on the thin report are broken. Can't edit them. Right-click = Error Message.  Even in Tabular Editor it won't allow us to edit the local measures. 

I believe this is due to the measures being embedded in the config of the report instead of its own semantic model. 

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks for the feedback. This is a bug, Desktop should warn the user the report measure cannot be edited while editing the semantic model.

[jol]

Good to know, thanks.

Is there any chance of at least making it possible to open a report with a "byPath" dataset reference and have the semantic model in read-only mode as if it was a live connection? Really just looking for a way to easily create and edit report measures, particularly given that reports and semantic models in the same workspace now default to using a "byPath" dataset reference with Fabric Git integration. Full ability to edit model measures and report measures side-by-side would be ideal, but having the ability to open a "byPath" semantic model in read-only mode would be the next best thing.

[jol]

Already talked to Rui about the new Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR) on the recent blog post, but thought I'd post here as well.

I've created two Ideas that you should all vote for! They both propose that user code within a report definintion should be stored outside of the standard PBIR JSON files, so that they can be directly edited offline without having to worry about escape characters. I understand the first one (report-level measures in TMDL files) is already on the backlog, but will likely be released post-GA.

Serialize report-level measures into one or more TMDL files when saving a report using the Power BI ... 

Serialize visual custom code (R/Python script visual, Deneb, etc.) as standalone files when saving a... 

[AkhilAshok]

I’ve encountered an issue in PBIR when attempting to group bookmarks. It appears that not all metadata is being captured correctly; only ‘children’ details are retained while other relevant information is omitted.

[RuiRomanoMS]

Thanks for reporting. Its a bug and a fix will roll out in the next few days.