Our team has been on PBI Report Server for several months now, and one of the issues that's holding back the adoption of PBI reports vs paginated SSRS reports is the lack of Visual Studio integration and source control. We're long-time SSRS customers, so the entire cycle of using Visual Studio -> SSDT -> publish to SSRS, all using TFS 2012/2015 for source control, is a cycle that is engrained in our processes and works well. For us, PBI reports are just the next step and another tool in the BI reporting toolbox, complementary to paginated reports and not a replacement. But the toolbox we've been given doesn't seem to have a spot to store these new tools. It feels like we're being asked to keep all of our old tools in one box, and then we're told to throw these new tools into a bag in the corner, even though the same company is manufacturing these new PREMIUM tools. 🙂
Metaphors aside, I'm still very confused about Microsoft's vision for BI Reporting teams who use Power BI Report Server and want to have version control on PBIX files. Even if we were full Power BI Premium subscribers, which is unlikely to ever happen in our environment, I don't think Microsoft has even tried to communicate their vision for any kind of verson control for Power BI Premium users either. Not everyone is using these as "self-service" tools - I suspect there are a lot of teams out there like ours who focus on the data aggregation and report creation so their internal customers, the report consumers, can focus on the direct needs of the business.
The reality is Power BI Service and Power BI Report Server customers have very different needs, and the only way I can see PBI reports fully meshing into our existing workflows is to see Visual Studio profiles and SSDT extensions added for PBIX report authoring. I can't parse PBIX files the way I parse RDL files either (as far as I'm aware) so that adds another layer of complexity. Not only that, we're believers of keeping the data in the database and having the reports pull the data in real-time, so for now I've recommended our team only use Direct Query PBI reports. Having PBI reports floating around with data embedded in them is just as bad as having piles of Excel spreadsheets all over the place with various versions of untracked data, at least in my experience. Isn't one of the reasons we all started using SSRS in the first place was to encourage users to use web reports and stop creating "New Folder(4)" with "Report002(2).xls" while everyone scratches their heads about which was the right version to use?
Does anyone else have similar issues? Is there a grand plan out there to make PBIX reports more "enterprise friendly" for teams like us?
