Same report PBIX, Different Shared Dataset data sources, Duplicated Reports in workspace. Why?

[Anonymous]

Has anyone encountered a reason and/or solution to why deploying an identical PBIX, but pointing at different data sources (in this particular testing of scenarios, I used 3 Shared Datasets) is creating duplicates of the same report?

End Result:

This is not end user friendly if users created personal bookmarks and subscriptions to the original report and I need to delete it because the repointed report never overwrote using the new datasource.

Yes, I did this all user 1 login.

No, PBI Desktop is not prompting to replace the report, it just deploys as soon as you choose the workspace.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Overwrite-report-created-in-the-Service/m-p/1180008#M100459

@Anonymous 

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous 

I create reports with different datasources ,and give the reports with same name .If I publish a report to service before , when I publish the second report with same name ,it will prompt “You already have a dataset named ‘test’ in Power BI. Replace this dataset ? ”

When you click “Replace” , the new will replace the original one in Service . There are no duplicate reports in my test .

In service ,it always shows only one record .

You can update the version of Power BI to latest one and try again ?

Best Regards

Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous Is there any other assistance you can lend on this issue?

If Power BI Desktop does not even prompt about replace, there is nothing to be done at that level.

I am logged in on PBI Desktop and Service with same credentials, I am using the exact same PBIX file, just pointing to 2 different versions of the same Dataset, 1 is Test and 1 is Production, but I still get 2 completely seperate copies of the Report publishing into the Workspace.

This may not be an immediate issue at our company, but I can foresee this being a large scale issue for some bigger companies. If someone needed to built other customized datasets and choose to repoint an existing report like this, it will cause them to delete the old report and keep the newly published version, then causing users to lose their bookmarks, subscriptions, shared links, etc.

I can't locate any useful 3rd party tools for this either. ALM Toolkit only connects to Datasets, PBIX, and Files. Tabular Editor only conencts to Datasets as well. Since the Service lets you view settings of a Dataset and make changes to the Datasource, maybe a good option would be allowing settings to appear on a Report that lets you select another Dataset at least?

I'm beginning to think this was a huge miss from whatever Power BI development team would have covered this ability.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Since I am using a Shared Dataset, it will never give an option to replace the dataset. As for the report, it doesn't prompt for replacing, it just creates the 2nd iteration immediately. I believe the only possible fix at this point will be what GilbertQ mentioned about doing the ZIP file and changing the GUID. I just haven't had the time to test it yet.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @Anonymous 

I have seen this in the past, what I did was to download the PBIX from the service, edit it and then upload.

If it does not prompt you to overwrite it will create a new one.

The reason is in the PBIX file there is a unique guid that identifies each report and for some reason this has changed.

You can at your own risk, change the .PBIX into a .zip and compare the GUID and make it the same as the existing report?

[Anonymous]

This had crossed my mind as a last resort. I just haven't had a chance to give it a go yet. I'll keep you updated if this works.

[Anonymous]

@GilbertQ So here is my question, how we even know what GUID is going to be changed and to what? There will be another Unique GUID assigned to a report when it is actually published to the service, which will not reflect any built in GUID into the PBIX file itself. So how/where would we choose this GUID to chance in the PBIX by unzipping to try and get this to actually replace the existing report on the PBI Service?

[GilbertQ]

From my understanding you want to keep the same report, so you would need to get the existing GUID and update it in your PBIX file.