When looking at a Report in a Workspace, how do I know whether it's been Published or Connected?

[samloud]

So, sometimes we Publish reports to a Workspace from Power BI Desktop. And sometimes we do it the alternative way, where we store the pbix files in SharePoint and Connect to them from the Workspace.

My question is this: 

When looking at a particular Report in a Workspace, is there a way to tell whether that Report was Published, or Connected? With a Dataset, you can go into refresh history and se teh Scheduled history (ie data refresh) and also the OneDrive history (ie pbix refresh). But I can't see a similar indicator for Reports. 

Any ideas where I can see this?

[samloud]

So you're saying that OneDrive Refresh for pbix files simply doesn't exist? And the pbix files have to be manually re-loaded into the workspace after each change to the report? 

That's quite an unusual thing to say. 

So these 2 reports here:

which connect to this Dataset here:

..which all refreshed atexactly the same second, are you suggesting that I manually re-uploaded the reports at exactly that scond?

It appears to me that when the dataset did its Dataset Refresh, the new versions of all reports connected to that dataset were brought down from SharePoint with a OneDrive Refresh.

Does it not work this way for you?

[lbendlin]

You are correct, as per this documentation.

Get data from Power BI Desktop files - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

I'll have to try that out.

[samloud]

It's a great way of doing it, but there's a *massive* gotcha. Once you've Connected to a pbix file in SharePoint, you can NEVER delete that file in SharePoint. The link SP --> PBI is sone on teh file ID, not file name, so if you delete it in SP, then re-upload it to SP, you're screwed, it won't connect to the file in the PBI Workspace ever again. This plays havoc with Pipelines etc.

[lbendlin]

Yes, at the bare minimum you should enable version history - which may give its own issues if the PBIX is rather large and the quota is rather small.

[lbendlin]

"store the pbix files in SharePoint and Connect to them from the Workspace"

That's not what you are doing.  You are uploading the pbix into the workspace.  And you are not refreshing reports, you are refreshing datasets.  You can see the refresh history in the dataset settings.

[samloud]

No, I save the pbix file in SharePoint, then go into the Workspace, and do a Connect from there. 

Get data from files for Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

This pulls a copy of the file from SharePoint over into the Workspace. (So when I say 'refresh' I mean a OneDrive Refresh, not a Dataset Refresh)

So if an edit is made to the file in OneDrive / SharePoint, would you expect to to get synced across to the PBI Workspace?

[lbendlin]

No, that only works for data sources in Sharepoint/Onedrive (like an Excel file, or a sharepoint list).  PBIX need to be manually loaded into the workspace after each design change.  AND you need to update the app manually to then bring the meta data back in sync.  

Same process as if you would upload from Power BI Desktop.