A summary of Power BI Developer discussions

Owned by Ann Crawford (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 14, 2024
4 min read

This will be a single page to note links and discussion in the Thursday PBI developer meeting 9 am to 10 am

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3/14/2024

  • Questions/ Problems - user help

    • @Kara Nowell - how to get the gateway to connect to an alias

  • Snowflake and PBI

Discussion

The gateway connection string must match exactly to the connection used in the dataset. All data sets will have to be updated. After deploying to the PBI service > goto settings > select PBI Gateway

Snowflake @Archana Pandey demonstrated the PBI connecting to a snowflake table. Data from allall UCSB datasources will be loaded into raw, refined to integrated and further refined to presentation. PBI will connect to presentation. Advantages are:

  1. No longer need gateway connection

  2. No need for data flows

  3. Direct control of security managed at the data level in snowflake both on rows and columns

  4. All transformations will be visible in snowflake rather than multiple places in pbi eg. dataflow, dataset,

 

PBI Snowflake concerns voiced by the group:

  1. If we are using direct connect mode on the snowflake data how will that affect performance?

  2. Can we use AD groups for security in snowflake?

  3. How will imbedded reports work with Snowflake.

  4. How difficult will it be to transform the MS SQL queries into Snowflake queries with the syntax differences?

 

 

2/29/2024

  • Questions/ Problems - user help

    • darshaun gateway refresh

  • Eric Johnstone - PBI story

  • dataflows and snowflake

2/15/2024

  • Questions/ Problems - user help

  • Power BI and Snowflake - awareness intro, how it can simplify Power BI

  • User Training - Help is on the way - @Mara Morrison an update on power bi training

  • Power BI Product Manager Role, is this needed?

    • site license

    • capacity maintenance, performance

    • cost management

    • security audits - who has access to what? who has access what? ( team level, not central, could recommend best practice )

    • Site usage growth - Grows product usages maintains and monitors Key Product Indicators PBI usage metrics -

    • Tracks PBI artifact inventory and use of ( team level, not central, could recommend best practice )

    • version control ( team level, not central, could recommend best practice )

  • PBI Source Control - Updates to Power BI Git confluence documentation

 

2/1/2024

@Mark Norstedt will present version control on PBI. We will discuss pros and cons.

1/4/2024

Agenda

  • questions from users

    • @Marsha Robertson connecting power bi to dev ops data for FMM project

    • Other questions?

  • Questions from 12/7/23

  • Source control

Source Control Process Design

Combine, pipelines and git and reduce power BI complexity.

There are two distinct processes for Power BI version control transitioning current content and continuous development.

Transitioning Current Content

Many reports and datasets in the production pipeline cannot be exported and edited in power bi desktop. Often pipelines have not been consistently used. Some data in prod not in dev. Export all reports that can be edited in the prod environment and check into the main branch.

Main devops location for all Power BI source code is https://dev.azure.com/etsesi.

  1. Remove Dev pipeline and replace all development with a user development workspace WS_Dev_<netid>. “Since a workspace can only be connected to a single branch at a time, it's recommended to treat this as a 1:1 mapping. However, to reduce the amount of workspace it entails, consider these options:

    • If a developer set up a private workspace with all required configurations, they can continue to use that workspace for any future branch they create. When a sprint is over, your changes are merged and you're starting a fresh new task, just switch the connection to a new branch on the same workspace. You can also do this if you suddenly need to fix a bug in the middle of a sprint. Think of it as a working directory on the web.

    • Developers using a client tool (such as VS Code, Power BI Desktop, or others), don’t necessarily need a workspace. They can create branches and commit changes to that branch locally, push those to the remote repo and create a pull request to the main branch, all without a workspace. A workspace is needed only as a testing environment to check that everything works in a real-life scenario. It's up to you to decide when that should happen. “ (microsoft best practices for life cycle management)

 

12/7/2023

Agenda

  • questions from users

  •  

    • How to view the notes/history of deployments added/done via a Deployment Pipeline?

    • Review source code control workflow for .rdl files and classic PBI report files

10/26/2023

Agenda

10/12/2023

Agenda

Notes

The reports must be saved as a PBIP file (PBI project). This feature is in preview and must be enabled on your power bi desktop. Go to Files> Options and Settings > Options > preview features > check box power BI Project(.pbib) save option.

 

 

 

 

References

Git and power bi - Power BI Desktop projects (PBIP) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

download tabular editor https://www.sqlbi.com/tools/tabular-editor/

pbi git video Empower every BI professional to do more with Microsoft Fabric | OD06

workspace settings for git Get started with Git integration - Microsoft Fabric