Forum Discussion
Deployment Pipelines and Azure Devops
I'll elaborate on jeffshieldsdev answer-
Since May, Power BI deployment pipelines have REST API that can be triggered from ADO pipelines and promote content through the stages in a Power BI pipeline. These APIs basically do the same operation that you can do through the UI of Power BI Service, but with all the value that ADO provides- scheduling dpeloyments, cascading multiple deployments, approvals, tests and many more.
What your colleagues asked about (i think) is why even use Power BI pipelines, when you can just use ADO pipelines and trigger regular Power BI REST APIs.
Well, there are quite a few advantages. to name some:
- Power BI pipelines allows for a holistic deployment of almost all the content in Power BI together, while REST API mostly support single artifacts that aren't related.
- In pipelines we also maintain the original connections between artifacts, as it was in the source stage. no need for 'rebind APIs'.
- Rules- PBI pipeline rules allow you to maintain connection and data to the target source, while with regular APIs you will need to set it after the import and refresh again, which causes downtime.
- Easier way to publish reports and datasets separately, even if you didn't separate them in the PBIX files.
- We are working now for APIs that will enable devs to build PBI pipelines from scratch, so that everything can be automated from scratch.
If you are using the same data source connection when working in Dev/ Test/ Prod, then there's no problem using 'Import API'. But if you want to switch connection between environments, as many customers do, this is where rules have the advantage vs. using the regular 'Import API'.
I'll elaborate on jeffshieldsdev answer-
Since May, Power BI deployment pipelines have REST API that can be triggered from ADO pipelines and promote content through the stages in a Power BI pipeline. These APIs basically do the same operation that you can do through the UI of Power BI Service, but with all the value that ADO provides- scheduling dpeloyments, cascading multiple deployments, approvals, tests and many more.
What your colleagues asked about (i think) is why even use Power BI pipelines, when you can just use ADO pipelines and trigger regular Power BI REST APIs.
Well, there are quite a few advantages. to name some:
- Power BI pipelines allows for a holistic deployment of almost all the content in Power BI together, while REST API mostly support single artifacts that aren't related.
- In pipelines we also maintain the original connections between artifacts, as it was in the source stage. no need for 'rebind APIs'.
- Rules- PBI pipeline rules allow you to maintain connection and data to the target source, while with regular APIs you will need to set it after the import and refresh again, which causes downtime.
- Easier way to publish reports and datasets separately, even if you didn't separate them in the PBIX files.
- We are working now for APIs that will enable devs to build PBI pipelines from scratch, so that everything can be automated from scratch.
Hi Nimrod_Shalit, I am at the start of the process of setting up deployment pipelines (not sure if I should use PBI Pipelines or Azure Pipelines yet) and I came across this thread.
In point 5, you mention devs wil be able to build PBI Pipelines from scratch. Would you be able to elaborate a bit more on this? Does it mean we will be able to add triggers/schedules to the PBI pipeline service? For example, if I use Azure Repos for Version Control, and then I upload a new version of a report, PBI Pipelines will pick this up and trigger a deployment?
Also, is using Azure Repos the right tool for Power BI dashboards as a version control tool?
Thanks.
- 'Building pipelines from scratch' meant to create them through APIs (Create new pipeline, assign WSs, grant access), not about triggers for deployment from within the Power BI service.
- To trigger a deployment today, you can use the 'Deploy' API. you still need a wasy to call them, i believe Azure pipeline will be a good way to implement it. We are working on ADO extension for deployments, so it will be even easier to integrate it into Azure pipelines.
- Power BI dashboards, unlike reports that are managed through PBIX files, don't have a file format. hence, there's no way to manage version control for them through Azure Repos.