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Microsoft Idea

Power BI

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Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

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Nithya Subramaniam on 25 Mar 2015 10:16:45

Ability to build reports/dashboards pointing to a data source (database in the Development / UAT machine) and then use the same reports/dashboards pointing to another data source (in the Production machine.

Comments (36)
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Jeroen van Steenbergen on 05 Jul 2020 22:22:05

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

'@Miguel, that does not work for a Live connection. I need to change the report datasource to use a MD Cube from another environment and this is causing me so much trouble...

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Andrew H on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:01

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

We need to repoint report as maintenance task and/or during deployment (have single version for all enviroments)

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Martin Kratky on 05 Jul 2020 22:15:37

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

Miguel, I have tried to change the database in the Power Query "navigation" option in PBI Desktop on MS SQL databases (on the same server) with database authentication. It doesn't work. Returns incorrect user can't be authenticated despite logon credentials being 100% correct.

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Gordon Gilbertson on 05 Jul 2020 22:08:34

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

So In my world I have Test,Demo and a number of production instances for different clients, each of these environments represents a different Azure databases.
Reading this my understanding was that I would have to start in the desktop environment, Use a Query in the datasource, build up my reports to where I want them. Then to deploy I would save a pbix for each environment.
Then to deploy I would go to each group workspace import the pbix and re apply the credentials for that environment.
Ok, that’s bad, but we are not talking mission critical here, so maybe I can live with it?
But it seems that doing this way, I am unable to have the data updated more than Daily, whereas I could get 15 minutes when I was not using a query but instead a straight Azure database connection.
Is there a way that I can develop and deploy to multiple environments using Azure database as my source and retain the 15 minutes?

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Miguel Miguel.Llopis on 05 Jul 2020 21:59:14

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

Thanks for the feedback!

You can achieve this today by authoring your reports with either Excel (Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View) or the Power BI Designer. You can access the Source step in your query and reconfigure it to point to a different Server/DB, etc. as the last change to the file before bringing it into the service.

Is that what you're looking for? Any disadvantages with the current solution?

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Nithya Subramaniam on 05 Jul 2020 21:59:14

RE: Re-pointing reports/dashboards at different data sources

I bring the dashboards (connected to UAT database) to the service, so I can let few end users login to Power BI and check, if the reports are what they want to have. Once they confirm they are ok, then I would want to point to the production database. Currently, I end up rebuilding the reports, since I am not able to re-point to a different data source.