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Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

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jeff.kanel on 04 Oct 2015 09:53:48

There is currently not path for developing and deploying Power BI Site Reports/Dashboards developed against on-premise Tabular AS cubes (via AS Connector). This effectively forces us to develop in production (and is detrimental to Power BI being as an enterprise grade tool). Ultimately, we need a way to change connections on the datasets underlying reports. We could then develop a new report against a "dev" cube and then promote it to the "prod" cube.

Comments (20)
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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:17:48

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

i require this

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Annie on 05 Jul 2020 23:06:59

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Any update on this?

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Kevin H on 05 Jul 2020 22:58:40

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

This is very needed! I publish Datasets to the Power BI Service, then many users use the Datasets to create Reports/Dashboards in the Power BI Service, and share them.

I can update the Dataset by re-publishing with the same PBIX file name, and all the Reports continue to work, and refer to the updated Dataset.

But if I want to rename my Dataset (by publishing a PBIX with a different file name), it would break all the Reports created in the Power BI Service. I can't re-point the Reports to a new Dataset.

Or, in the past, I once had a Dataset published to the Power BI Service that got "corrupted" somehow, such that scheduled refresh would never work -- even if I "overwrote" the Dataset by re-publishing a new PBIX with the same name. Without scheduled refresh, the Dataset was worthless. We had do delete the dataset; and all the Reports had to be re-built.

Hopefully, issues like this wouldn't happen again, but you never know! It feels very risky for us to have users creating all these Reports/Dashboards in the Power BI Service, built on a published Dataset having a particular name. If something goes wrong with that Dataset, a lot of work can be lost.

What I'd like to see is: in the "Settings" menu for a Report, it should show the Dataset from which the Report gets its data; and, have a drop-down menu that lets you SWITCH to get data from a different Dataset. Assuming the data model in the new Dataset includes all of the column/field names that are referenced by the Report, it should "just work."

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:55:52

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Also need this!

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JasonB on 05 Jul 2020 22:51:25

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Ditto this.

"Allow people to create a copy of a dashboard and point it to a different dataset. Azure Enterprise Enrollment number changed, so the usage data is in a new dataset. How can the reporting/dashboard work be preserved from the old dataset and get applied to the new one?"

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:38:37

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Allow people to create a copy of a dashboard and point it to a different dataset. Azure Enterprise Enrollment number changed, so the usage data is in a new dataset. How can the reporting/dashboard work be preserved from the old dataset and get applied to the new one?

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Michel Boks on 05 Jul 2020 22:36:58

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

I support the idea of being able to change the dataset in the Web Service. I don't use the Desktop version to build reports due to PowerBI limitations, but build them online in the Web Service.
I create the reports on a development dataset and need to point it at production when done. Since I can't do that, I have to either completely rebuild it, or "develop" on production (?!).

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:35:24

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Agreed, user selectable datasets would be useful. Schemas would match, but the datasets may be of different time periods.

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BILAHARI MANIPUZHA on 05 Jul 2020 22:24:03

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Much needed functionality to allow pointing to different dataset (as long as the dataset matches).

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Bjoern on 05 Jul 2020 22:11:18

RE: Change Datasets Under Power BI Site Reports (i.e. Deployment Model)

Guys, this feature request is useless. The connection string can be changed easily and does not cause any problems. Either you do it via changing the connection string directly or using the "get data / edit source" stuff. I do not see the point in this request.