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Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

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Harsha on 03 Jul 2017 11:21:18

Currently each Power BI report published to the Report Server has its own data source embedded within the report. Any change in the source would require us to change hundreds of published reports individually. Could we have a shared data source/connection similar to SSRS Reports that would help us manage deployment and changes much more efficiently.

Administrator on 01 Apr 2019 23:38:54

We're not planning to make this feature available in Power BI Report Server. We are looking at making available an API to allow you to change the data source programatically, however, to make movement between servers easier.

Comments (93)
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Power BI Ideas Admin on 06 Jul 2020 00:02:44

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

With the September 2019 release of PowerBI ReportServer you can now change a SQL Server data source using the API. This means you don't need to download and re-upload the report. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/connect-data-source-apis As far as I can tell you can only do it programmatically. The manage>data sources connection string box still cannot be edited manually on the report server itself.

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 06 Jul 2020 00:02:08

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

I can only agree with the previous speakers, this function would greatly facilitate our working lives. To have one single point of truth, it is essential to provide shared data sources to our end users.

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Power BI User on 06 Jul 2020 00:02:05

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

Dear PBI Team, this feature would be really awesome, in my company we have thousands of users who are asking about this functionality, which was used SSRS. This would persuade many of our customers to move from SSRS to Power BI

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AJ on 06 Jul 2020 00:00:43

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

PBI Team, please consider having the support for Data Sources being available in PBI Server (On Prem).
As indicated by a lot of other users in this post; Shared Data Sources is a feature which allows teams to manage Reports and PBI connection strings thru a singular place.

With enhancements in security, and changes to business processess and policies, changing 3000+ Reports/PBI connection strings manually will be a nightmare.

Putting the onus on developers to redeploy, or exposing an API for the same does not help, as they will have to utilize the API to do the same.
It increases the risk for the developers to erroneously modifying the Data Source connection string per item.

We are doing a POC for Power BI Server. If we have to make the update manually or thru API, it might be a deterrent for adoption.

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Greg Cook on 05 Jul 2020 23:59:57

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

We are in the process of moving to a CI/CD approach for our entire BI team. Power BI reports hosted on-premise have become the limiting factor because we cannot simply point the datasource connection to a shared datasource on the server like we do with RDL files. It has become such a problem that we are revisiting our decision to use Power BI on-premise now and have begun evaluating competing products and they support this type of shared / common data source connection information.

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SamB on 05 Jul 2020 23:59:08

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

I am also curious when this API will be available?

I'm trying to build a CI/CD pipeline for Power BI reports (Power BI Report Server) and I can't seem to hack around anything to make it work (update the datasources in each environment).

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Moe on 05 Jul 2020 23:58:56

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

when this is going to happen?
"API to allow you to change the data source programatically,"?

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Srinivas Pyla on 05 Jul 2020 23:56:30

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

just getting into PBI RS from SSRS, feels like a downgrade. need to be able to change the data source without changing anything else. Moving from Dev to Test to Stage to Prod is going to be "FUN"

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:53:56

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

Then SSRS is better than Power BI

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Mike Foss on 05 Jul 2020 23:51:54

RE: Shared data source connection (live to Tabular SSAS) for reports published on Power BI Report Server

I agree the shared datasource is huge and should work for everything being posted on the report server.