Deploy Power BI reports programatically with different SSAS connections per tenant

[Michael_Mueller]

Hello,

we develop and manage a software as a service platform using PowerBI embedded with Analysis Services in Microsoft Azure.
Our CI/CD pipeline process provides an SQL database, Analysis Service Database, Web Application, PowerBi Embedded Workspace and multiple services per customer.
Everything works fine for these steps.

But the report deployment is still a manual process:

- Open PowerBI Desktop

- Open the report in question

- Connect to the QA SSAS server and select the database for the customer for this specific deployment

- Publish the report and select the PowerBI embedded workspace for that specific customer

- Check visually that the report is working via Power BI Portal

We would like to deploy the reports using PowerShell, but we could not find a way to change the connection string.
We found multiple ways to change connection strings if no SSAS is involved, but we need SSAS.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Kind regards,

Michael

[Michael_Mueller]

Hi @v-henryk-mstf ,

thank you for your input and sorry for my late response.

The provided article is a great source for PowerBI related solutions for pbix files containing the data and its model.

What we need, is a way to connect a given report to an Azure Analysis Service and deploy the report to a given workspace. This aspect is not handled by the John Miners article.

We tried to manipulate the pbix file in regards to its datasource connection, but since we could not refresh the required checksum within the document, we were not able to deploy the report after altering the document.

Our reports use SSAS with live connections (we don't import the data into the pbix file).

All measures are defined within SSAS, not inside the pbix.

We cannot use variables since this feature is not available once connected to an Analysis Service.

We have:

- 1 SSAS for QA (pre production)

- 1 SSAS for PROD

- a  pair of workspaces per customer for QA and PROD

- 30+ customers

If we want to deploy a new version of a give report to all customers, we need to manually open the report in powerbi desktop, select the customers ssas datasource and the QA workspace for that customer and publish the report 

Then we have to repeat this step for the next 30 customers one by one.

The goal is to have 1 report for all customers and only change datasource and workspace without manual steps in between.

Please let me know, if you need more input.

Kind regards,

Michael

[v-henryk-mstf]

Hi @Michael_Mueller ,

Based on your description, see if the following documentation on managing reports via powershell is helpful to you.

Manage Power BI Reports PowerShell (mssqltips.com)

If the problem is still not resolved, please provide detailed error information and related operation screenshoots. Looking forward to your reply.

Best Regards,
Henry

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