What is a Workbook in Power BI service and what is it used for

[xbrenes]

There are four sections in the Power BI service: Dashboards, Reports, Workbooks, and Datasets

What is a Workbook ? What is it used for?

[Seth_C_Bauer · Accepted solution]

@xbrenes Excel Workbooks. If you want to store excel files in the Service you can, they open up in Excel Online.

[sxt173]

Okay, but why? Just so it's stored/shown in the App? Does it add functionality like ability to schedule data model refreshes?

[Tad17]

There are a couple of different uses. You can pin tables and graphs from the excel doc to dashboards. While you can't schedule automatic refreshes you can hit reload and and it will refresh any changes you made to the file in excel online (One Drive works the same). I currently use it to pin a few graphs from an excel file for reports that I have to manually update because I do not have premium so I don't have access to incremental refresh so I manually update the file and it updates the pie chart that is pinned to a dashboard with other various relevant data. Not ideal, but pretty handy.

The excel workbook also functions as part of the data set so you can use tables in it in the report. I haven't messed with this because If I was going to do this I would just add the file as a source in the pbix before uploading, but I'm sure it has some utility. I just prefer to keep my auto refresh stuff and my manual refresh stuff clearly separated.

[gvg]

@Tad17 ,

You can pin something to the dashboard once you have it in Power BI service. How do you get Excel file into Power BI service Workbooks? There are no active buttons and/or links in there.

[Tad17]

Hey @gvg 

Here is the tutorial on getting excel workbooks into the workbook grouping in Power BI: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-excel-workbook-files

And here is the tutorical on pinning parts of it to a Power BI Dashboard: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-dashboard-pin-tile-from-excel

If this helps please kudo.

If it answers your question please accept it as a solution.

[Anonymous]

Is it possible to schedule the daily situation of a dataset in a workbook?

Day1 : creation of workbook based on a copy of data set on current day

Day2: creation of another workbook based on a copy of datset on current day

In other word i want to do a snapshot of my dataset (once a week maybe) and save it in a workbook, can i?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

@Seth_C_Bauer do you know if is possible?