Swap semantic model in Power BI Service

[rickymcmaster]

Hi, I created a report directly in the service based on a semantic model in another workspace, and now I'd like to change the source to a semantic model in the same workspace as the report. However, I cannot find a way of doing this...

Of course it would also be theoretically possible to solve the issue by being able to download the report as a .pbix file, if they were in the same workspace, but I cannot due to the limitations. 

I saved a copy of the report to the original workspace where the original semantic model was in the hope that I could download it from there, but this was also not successful:

Is there something obvious I've missed?

[oduc78]

Hi @rickymcmaster, were you able to fix your problem (swap the semantic model of a report on Power BI Service without downloading / Desktop) by using Git or something else?

I've got this semantic model that somehow got corrupted last week (it won't let me use/create public URLs anymore for any report pointing to it) regardless of its name or content (looks like the DatasetID got "flagged" somehow), and I'd like to edit my 450+ customer reports that point to it and replace the model DatasetID with that of a fresh model, but any Data Source Settings or any manual PBIX/ZIP/Connections file modification that I tried generates reports with the same name but a different ReportID after I publish it with Desktop or upload it on Power BI Service.

I'm interested to know what you found.

Regards, Olivier.

[toribiolmSXP]

You can rebind the report to the new Semantic Model using the following link (will be done by REST API). Reports - Rebind Report In Group - REST API (Power BI Power BI REST APIs) | Microsoft Learn

[Andrea_Anp]

To edit, follow these steps:

1. In Power BI Service, open the report and select the Edit mode.
2. From the File menu, select Download this file.
3. Choose the option to create a copy of your file with a live data connection.
4. Open the file in Power BI Desktop.
5. Modify the data source from the Data source settings menu.

[Raubritter]

works like a charm!

[nrichards_au]

I had this same problem.

Assuming your semantic models have near identical structures with all measures the same etc. 

good old select all, copy & paste between the downloaded version and the new version connecting to the semantic model I needed to use.

Another avenue that may work for you if it's identical schemas is downloading both the report from the relevant workspaces, rename of extension from <.pbix> to <.zip> and using notepad++ or some other pure text editor to copy and paste the data from the Connections file into the other and see if you have any joy

[Anonymous]

Hi, you can swap semantic model by clicking in Data source settings (Home bar -> Transform data). Choose your semantic model and wait a few seconds. You will see the change at the bottom of the page. 

I hope it helps you!

[cdc71]

You're missing the point. 
In the Desktop you can do that. But the point is that we made a report online (in the Service) that is not downloadable because of a scrazy limitation (report was build on a dataset in another workspace).
So if not downloadable -> no pbix file, if no pbix file -> no Desktop functionality.

[Nitish007]

Try google rebind reports. Thats your solution using rest api calls

[cdc71]

This is indeed crazy.

So you want, in a corporate environment, one semantic model in workspace hidden for end users, and have them access it via the Onelake data hub.

And then explain them to never use the service to create reports because of this limitation.

????

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @rickymcmaster 

There are any option that I can think of is to use git integration and get. the PBIX file into source control and doing it that way you would get the data set and the report. What you could then do is get the pbip file and open that in Power BI desktop which will allow you to then get the report.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @rickymcmaster 

The only workaround is to download the reports and then open it up in Power BI desktop and connect it to the new source.

[rickymcmaster]

Thanks @GilbertQ , I edited my question to make it a bit clearer.  The original report was based on a semantic model in another workspace.  When I created it I (obviously) did not realise this was a limitation.