Track Weekly Deployments From SharePoint List

[Belindah]

I have a report that tracks overall deployments for a hardware refresh project that is tracked via a SharePoint list. I have been tasked with adding a page to the report that tracks the deployments on a weekly basis, as well. My brain is struggling to figure out where to even start! I would somehow need to track changes in a column called Devices Deployed week-to-week, and I don't know how to go about doing that, or if it's even possible. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[christinepayton]

It depends on what they mean by "track deployments on a weekly basis" - if they just want to know how many deployments completed in a given week, assuming you have a date field for the completed date of the deployment, you could just group that into weeks in a visual using a date table. Date tables are completely worth learning if you haven't used them before. 

But if they want snapshot-ish history based on how the records looked at a particular point in time, that's a going to be a lot more convoluted - you'd need to have something record that data. A Power Automate flow on a schedule would be a good place to start with that, but honestly that kind of tracking isn't usually worth it for small sources. 

[Belindah]

The snapshot-ish history is what they are looking for. The completed date field is not populated until ALL deployments for a particular location are complete, but the Devices Deployed field is updated as the devices are deployed, so it changes almost daily.

[christinepayton]

I have a technique here for snapshotting SP lists for PBI - this is more of a non-premium, low-code, anyone-can-do-it option. Otravers suggested the more robust, engineer-y Fabric option if you have Fabric to work with. 

[otravers]

You can orchestrate a dataflow Gen2 from a Data Factory pipeline on a weekly schedule, and have the dataflow materialize the snapshots in OneLake. Everything you need is in Fabric, no need for Power Automate.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Belindah ,

I'm assuming that the historical data won't change and you can try:
Table1 --> References the combined table and removes unneeded columns:

Filtering out the latest data through M-code:

Subsequent consolidation of data and screening of data for the second week:

Once you have this field, you can visualize your new page in desktop, put it in a card or table to display the data.

Best Regards,

Xianda Tang

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

[Belindah]

Thank you! I will try this out.

[TomMartens]

Hey @Belindah ,

tracking change in a data source is not that simple, even more so if the data source is not supporting query folding by support. Check this article as it describes how you can use the datamart feature to identify the change: How to use Incremental Refresh on ANY data source! – PBI Guy (pbi-guy.com)

Please be aware that the datamart feature requires either Power BI Premium or Premiumm Per User licensing.

Hopefully, this provides you an idea of how to tackle your challenge.

Regards,

Tom

[Belindah]

Thank you! I will check this out. I do have Power BI Premium, and my report is stored in a premium shared workspace.