Use Power BI Desktop as a Local Server on a PC

[matt16]

It is possible to open Power BI Desktop, detect the port number, open Excel, connect to the running local instance of Power BI Desktop as a local SSAS instance and then build a pivot table over the local server. You can do this using DAX Studio. This is very useful and as more people build Power BI Desktop files as the main data model, this will become more important. There is an "Analyze in Excel" feature in the Power BI Service and I would like to see the same for Power BI Desktop. As a suggested approach to a solution, you could enhance the Power BI Ribbon in Excel. There is already a "Connect to Data" button that connects to the service. You could enhance this to include a button that connects to a local instance of Power BI Desktop running on the PC.

[nishalit]

With the External Tools integration, users can now connect various tools to a local Power BI desktop instance including Excel.

[bob3]

Strong YES vote for Power BI desktop (pbix file) as data source for Excel, just like the online service is, but local, without the failing connection string issues we face constantly. Can't understand why MS is waiting to do this - it is a critical need and should have been done long ago.