Publishing from desktop application to group workspace

[BPhetchamphone]

Is there a way for me to publish a report created in the desktop application to a workspace? Every time I publish, the report goes directly to my personal workspace. 

Is there a way around this? As far as I know, you cannot share a content pack with a group workspace- you have to share it via e-mail. Am I doing something wrong?

[shamjones]

There might be a workaround, but it certainly isn't solved from the PowerBI Desktop perspective.

[JorgenHNO3]

I agree. I think that you should be able to do 
Publish --> To Workspace A
This issue and the limitation of not being able to import Power BI Service reports into Power BI desktop makes the development process a little bit akward.

[brianjsvehaug]

The work around that works well for me:

1. Save the .pbix file locally
2. In PowerBI, select "Get Data"
3. Under Files. Select "Get"
4.  Select "Local File"
5. Browse and find your .pbix file

Et voila!

[Anonymous]

Brian,

  That solves the issue of getting data to your personal workspace, but we needed to move between shared workspaces.  Sounds like Microsoft are working on it.

   - Pete

[brianjsvehaug]

Hi Pete,

I apologize for the confusion. What I meant was:

Once you're in the group view, THEN:

1. Save the .pbix file locally
2. In PowerBI (within your group workspace), select "Get Data"
3. Under Files. Select "Get"
4. Select "Local File"
5. Browse and find your .pbix file

Et voila!

[gusly]

@brianjsvehaug, but this method doesn't work well in cases when reports are updated right? If I publish the report again from the desktop app and hits replace, it won't replace this copy. Am I wrong here?

[Akahn]

I agree this is cumbersome. It should be easier to work together and share reports/dashboards. I don't want ANOTHER workaround...

[Anonymous]

I agree, this is a major limit in the use of Power BI for development team as opposed to lone analysts.   One suggestion we gave to our local rep to pass on, was to add a Workspace drop down to the report Save As dialog.  That way you could publish to the personal workspace, and save as to a group workspace.  It would also solve the issue of supporting a development copy of a workspace prior to publication for team testing.

[CyrusOC]

Something apparently was fixed as I am now able to use the groups feature with SSAS.

[meysun]

Publishing reports to group space from the designer is in our backlog and is not currently supported in the shipping product. You should use the browser to upload the pbix file to the group space for now. You should be able to publish a content pack from the group space

[CyrusOC · Accepted solution]

Hope this gets done soon, groups are by far the most disappointing feature that isn't fully baked in PowerBI.  We need to not only be able to publish from the Desktop but move reports between groups.  How this was missed form product development is very puzzling.  Also, SSAS Tabular data connections do not work in groups, so it pretty much makes the whole feature set impossible to use for all of my use cases.

[BPhetchamphone]

Hey @CyrusOC,
    As far as publishing to groups goes, I've been working around this by publishing to my personal workspace on powerbi.com, then creating a content pack to share between various groups- you should have been given a group e-mail when you created your group workspace (e.g. BITeamWorkspace@yourcompany.onmicrosoft.com). When you push an update through from your desktop application, a notification should pop up on your dashboard asking you to update your content pack. 

This still doesn't fix the issue of multiple people from that group not being able to download and publish to a workspace from their desktop application. 

I feel as though there should be a check-in, check-out system like that in Sharepoint/365 for reports in Power BI as well...

Hope this helps. 

[gusly]

@BPhetchamphone, this notification you mention - where should it appear? I can't seem to get it to pop up anywhere.

[BPhetchamphone]

@gusly, 
     Any time you update a report that is included in a content pack, a notification will pop up in the right hand corner saying that you've changed a report that is part of a content pack. If you are not getting this notification, I'd encourage you to go into your settings in powerbi.com, view content packs, and see if there is any exclamation mark icons next to the title of your content pack, if there is, that means that there are changes that you've made on your end that you haven't yet pushed to the content pack. Example :  

[gusly]

@BPhetchamphone,

What you're talking about happens when a reported is updated through the web app, not when publishing and replacing through the desktop app. However, your information helped me though since it made me realize I can get what I want by doing the following:

1. Update report in desktop app.
2. Publish and replace.
3. Update report in web app (no real changes, just triggering content pack update).
4. Update content pack.

Thank you!

[CyrusOC]

I'd rather it work as advertised, I can't promote a work around as a soltuion.