Reducing the impact of data model changes on personal bookmarks

[emarc1]

I'm trying to understand exactly what changes can cause issues to personal bookmarks, so that changes can be made without impacting my users as much. This becomes more important as more personalisable visuals are used on reports.

Clearly, a personal bookmark will break if we remove a field that it has filtered, but what about personal bookmarks on visuals where:

• New fields are added.
• Fields are renamed.
• Fields are deleted but then replaced with new fields with the same names.
• The report page is renamed.
• Calculated column formulas are modified.
• Data model relationships are modified.
• Data model perspectives are changed (for personalisable visuals).

The documentation* says that the current page, filters, slicers, visual selection state, sort order and drill location are saved... But in what format? Are unique object IDs or any other metadata used that can cause issues? Most importantly: Are there any techniques or processes that can be used to mitigate impact on personal bookmarks?

*https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/power-bi/consumer/end-user-bookmarks

[Shoopastar]

I don't have an answer to your question, but I just learned of something really scary that you should keep on your radar. A personal bookmark can revert a slicer's settings to a previous state. For example, if you have published a report to the service with a slicer that can multi-select and a user creates a personal bookmark, if you later on change that slicer's settings to use single-select the personal bookmark can revert the slicer back to a multi-select.

[lbendlin]

That might be scary but is not unexpected.  A bookmark is nothing more than a snapshot of a report's meta data at a certain point in time (for a particular user).  If the slicer was multi select when the bookmark was last updated then it will be multiselect when the bookmark is reactivated.

[v-jayw-msft]

Hi @emarc1 ,

As the document said "A bookmark captures the state of a report page." It will keep the "format" where you saved. Such as visual, slicer and filter. But for example, columns, tables and relationships are not part of the format. They are part of the "data model". Bookmarks will not save these things.

Best Regards,

Jay

[emarc1]

Sorry, I think you have misunderstood my question.

I want to avoid breaking end-user personal bookmarks after changes have been made to the reports that they use. Filters, slicers and visuals all reference the data model, so changes to the data model can cause any bookmarks from before the change to break. I'm trying to learn exactly what changes cause issues to pre-existing bookmarks and why.

I think I'm going to need to collect some examples.