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Microsoft Idea

    Power BI

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    Power BI Desktop publish as "Data Model Only with Refresh from Power BI Service"

    Vote (16) Share
    Daniel Bartley's profile image

    Daniel Bartley on 07 Jun 2016 11:36:21

    As a user I would like an option to upload a pbix file as a model only.
    This option should only appear for eligible datasets.

    All pbix files published to the Power BI Service currently include the model and all the data. In my experience, this means much time wasted watching the dots spin while the desktop app completes the publish task. It doesn't work like this on SSAS tabular.

    This is not an efficient use of bandwidth or my local machine.

    For cloud-borne data (eg. Azure Sql database) my preference is to be able to choose a "Upload model only & refresh from Power BI Service" option. This option would upload the model only and then trigger the service to refresh the model using the Power BI Service independently of my local machine running Power BI Desktop.

    Comments (1)
    Daniel Bartley's profile image Profile Picture

    Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:50:52

    RE: Power BI Desktop publish as "Data Model Only with Refresh from Power BI Service"

    Yes, this feature would be useful for the developers in terms of maintenance like adding the columns/calculated columns, tables to the model, updating the relations, etc. without loading the data into the report which would save the time in terms of report refresh time and exporting to PBI service for the large datasets.