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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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J. D. on 05 Jul 2020 23:39:30

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

Surprised this wasn't part of PowerBI from the get go... This is greatly needed.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:37:24

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

Add it plz....

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Jason Howard on 05 Jul 2020 23:37:24

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

To echo some of the other comments, this seems like a basic piece of functionality. It is how SSRS has operated for years as well as many competitors. Who embeds a source in each report when you are an Enterprise with hundreds of them?

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:36:57

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

This functionality is a must. Having to manage credentials per individual reports reduces our security practices as we cannot rotate accounts/passwords

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 23:36:57

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

I concur you should be able to utilize a shared data source just like in Report Builder, Mobile report publisher etc. There are a lot of features in other Microsoft tools that seem to always be left out in newer software. Maybe create a list on common features and include them in all builds.

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Richard D'Angelo on 05 Jul 2020 23:36:22

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

We currently host over 2,500 SSRS reports on our power bi report server, all of which use shared data sources. We just started on our journey to adding Power BI reports. Not having shared data source connections is something that is keeping us from doing a larger role out. We have to change passwords to sources on a yearly basis and having to do that across a lot of power bi reports manually would be a nightmare.

Not to mention, we don't have a good way to mange across various environments, i.e. Stage, DEV, QA, etc... Someone wants a power bi report in DEV, we have to manually create all the connections, then when it moves to QA we have to do that same process all over again. It's a lot of redundancy in the report development lifecycle.

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Phil Bailey on 05 Jul 2020 23:35:57

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

'@Riccardo - could you please provide an update on shared/server-based connections for PBI?

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James Micallef on 05 Jul 2020 23:35:43

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

Ideally not just have shared data sources only for PowerBI but be able to share the same data sources across SSRS and Power BI reports.

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Andrew Me on 05 Jul 2020 23:34:23

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

This should be basic functionality. Not having it is absurd.

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Mark Stacey on 05 Jul 2020 23:33:46

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

This is an enormously painful missing feature, for test to prod deploys, for SSAS server migrations, it makes something that should be minutes turn into a huge project.

It makes things like upgrading to a new version of SSAS much more painful