How to Automatically Sync Power BI Reports Across Workspaces?

[Dave149]

Hi everyone,

We're currently managing multiple Power BI workspaces and are looking for a way to automatically sync a report across them.

We have one workspace that contains the "ground truth" report, the one that gets updated and maintained. Ideally, we'd like changes in this report to be automatically reflected in the corresponding reports in other workspaces. This sync could be time-based (e.g., once per day) or event-driven (e.g., when a change is published).

If true automation isn't possible, we’d at least like to manually trigger the sync with a single action (e.g., pressing a button), rather than copying the report manually to each workspace every time.

Thanks in advance!

[v-sgandrathi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Dave149,

Thank you for your question.

Here are the effective options for syncing reports across workspaces:

Shared Semantic Model: You can build your report once and publish the dataset to a centralized workspace. From there, you can create “thin” reports in other workspaces that are connected to this shared dataset. These thin reports contain only the visual layer and do not duplicate the data model. 

As a result, any updates to the centralized dataset, such as new measures, refreshed data, or model changes are automatically reflected in all reports that rely on it. This method significantly reduces maintenance overhead and ensures consistency in business logic and data definitions across your organization.

The OneDrive or SharePoint integration provides an efficient, low-code solution for managing report updates. By saving your .pbix file in OneDrive or SharePoint Online and importing it into Power BI from there, Power BI will automatically monitor the file for changes and synchronize updates on an hourly basis. This method streamlines version control and allows you to distribute report updates across multiple workspaces without requiring manual effort.

If automation is not an option, you can manually copy reports between workspaces using the Power BI Service. Simply open the report in the service and select File -- Save a Copy to publish it to another workspace. Although this is a manual process, it is generally quicker and more efficient than downloading the report and re-uploading it from Power BI Desktop each time you need to make updates.

Here are the Microsoft official Documents you can have a look:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-datasets-across-workspaces

Create reports based on semantic models from different workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Copy reports from other apps or workspaces - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Thank you.

[ibarrau]

Hi. Just in case I'll asnwer in two ways.

If you are talking about data... then what you need a data structure. If you build a single source of truth like a data warehouse keeping all data up to date, then you don't need to think that one report will change others if the data is updated for them all. It can also be thinking in dataflows for the tables shared in multiple reports.

If you want the visual changes in a report in a workspace to be reflected in another report in a different workspace. Then I would say it's pretty imposible. You could like copy paste opening two powerbi desktops, save them both as power bi project and copy the visuals files (way more complex). If you need a piece of the whole report it's copy pasting. If you need the whole changes like it's the same report in another workspace then I would start thinking why you have copies of the same report, maybe there it is something to improve.

I hope that helps,