David on 22 Jun 2016 10:44:35
One of the biggest frustrations at the moment is that Power BI desktop cannot connect to an existing data model which has been published to the web. A lot of the data models have a lot of business logic in and there is absolutely no point in having duplicated data models in separate files as this poses a risk in terms of maintaining logic in multiple places
Since the web portal does not support backing up or versioning data models and reports, it is also not an option to create the reports and dashboards in the web designer as the risk of losing development effort is too great
Since this functionality has recently been made available through Excel, is it possible to make it available in the desktop app too?
- Comments (9)
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
'@charles sterling - Not the same thing, the feature you specified in your link just lets you base new reports on a separate data model. What we are asking for is the ability to use a separate data model published to the Power Bi service already in a "DIFFERENT" data model. That way you don't have to rebuild parts of what you've already built in a new model.
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
Yeah this was delivered in April!
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/connecting-to-datasets-in-the-power-bi-service-from-desktop/
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
I currently connect to an Excel data model on sharepoint to via Power Pivot in Excel to provide data for various analysis files for use by different financial controllers in our organisation. Are there any plans to have a similar connection ability to Power BI?
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
AvatarDan commented · Just Now · Delete
We need this! Any updates? Could also leverage from Flow and power apps. And as we have more web based, varied data connectors this becomes more relevant. Hard for every desktop user to replicate
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
I would give all of my votes for this one feature!
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
Yes! This definitely needs to be done for exactly the reasons you describe. I recently had to create a 'semantic layer' for someone off my Power BI model. The only to do it was to take a copy of my master model and tailor it but then I have multiple versions and maintenance starts to become unwieldy This is well worthy of more than 61 votes and shouldn't be left to prioritisation via the voting forum
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
I would love love love it if we could publish key dimensions or sets of meta data as reusable datasets that could then be used across data models. Things like the corporate calendar as a date dimension, the standardized product catalog or customer list. That way calculated fields, hierarchies, sort by logic, data load M scripts etc etc could be reusable.
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
Yes! It's very important!
RE: Connect to an existing Power BI data model
Do you mean design reports that consolidate multiple data models and write DAX that integrates data sets that after published to the service, cos that would rock hard.