One of the essential elements of the software program improvement life cycle is to have management over totally different variations of an answer, particularly in a challenge the place there’s a couple of developer concerned within the implementation. Identical to while you usually create a challenge in visible studio and also you commit the adjustments again to a supply management system like GitHub or Azure DevOps, it’s suggested to maintain the historical past of various variations of your Energy BI reviews. What we anticipate from a supply management resolution is to maintain monitoring of all adjustments occurring within the supply code whereas creating a challenge. So you may simply roll again to a earlier state for those who wish to. 

The opposite profit of getting a supply management course of in place is when a number of builders are engaged on a single challenge. Each single one in all them makes adjustments within the supply code then they commit all of the adjustments into the supply management server with out overwriting every others’ work. 

With Energy BI issues are a bit totally different although. Energy BI report recordsdata are PBIX recordsdata that are saved in binary format (nicely, PBIX is principally a zipper file isn’t it?) which on the time of scripting this submit, there isn’t any official strategy to implement Energy BI supply management in any supply management options like GitHub or Azure DevOps (YET). 

Microsoft introduced a unbelievable function final week (6/05/2020) named “Deployment Pipelines” which does precisely what we’re after, however it’s at the moment a preview function which is just obtainable solely to organisations with Energy BI Premium. So it’s out of the sport for almost all of us.

Having stated that, there’s nonetheless a strategy to preserve historical past of adjustments within the form of various variations of PBIX recordsdata. That is known as Model Management.

There are a number of methods you may allow model management over your PBIX recordsdata whereas creating the report. Whatever the model management platform you’ll want to take into consideration having a number of environments and who can entry them for doing what.

Model Management Choices

In case your organisation doesn’t have a Premium capability then “Deployment Pipelines” function just isn’t obtainable to you. So you’ll want to provide you with an answer although. On this part I title some Model Management choices obtainable to you

• OneDrive for Enterprise
• Microsoft Groups/SharePoint On-line

Model Management with One Drive for Enterprise

Within the absence of an official supply management mechanism, the inherent supply management functionality of “One Drive for Enterprise” can be utilized for model management. It might be good to create a challenge listing, then 4 sub-directories, one for every surroundings. We then copy recordsdata to every challenge listing in related surroundings listing. We then share the challenge directories and their sub-folders with related folks.

Suggestions:

• It is strongly recommended to have separate Workspaces in Energy BI Service for every surroundings. After copying PBIX recordsdata to the subsequent surroundings, the reviews should be printed to the related Workspace surroundings in Energy BI Service.
• Knowledge connections should to be switched to the proper information supply when deploying from Dev to UAT.

Restoring an Older Model

Restoring an older model could be very easy. The person with the proper stage of entry must login to “OneDrive for Enterprise” on-line, navigate to the corresponding listing, click on on the ellipsis button on the proper aspect of the file then click on “View Historical past”.

A “Model Historical past” web page exhibits a full historical past of adjustments within the file. Now you can click on on the ellipsis button of an older model then click on “Restore”.

Hold the Experiences Up to date After Publishing to Energy BI Service

One of many coolest options of utilizing OneDrive for Enterprise together with Energy BI Service is that you just publish the report only one time, then Energy BI Service retains the reviews undated immediately from OneDrive for Enterprise. Which means that you actually don’t must republish the reviews a number of instances. You simply make the adjustments to the file and put it aside. By default, OneDrive updates recordsdata each hour, you may choose to maintain the recordsdata updated from the dataset settings.

Tip:

• DO NOT publish the reviews to Energy BI Service from Energy BI Desktop. As an alternative, get the report immediately from Energy BI Service out of your OneDrive for Enterprise. In any other case you lose the automated file updates function in Energy BI Service.

Publishing the Experiences From Energy BI Service

• In Energy BI Service navigate to a workspace
• Click on “New” then click on “Dataset” (you too can click on “Get Knowledge” on the button left of the web page)
• Click on “Recordsdata”
• Click on “OneDrive for Enterprise”
• Click on a Energy BI report file (PBIX)
• Click on “Join”

Setting Auto Replace on the Dataset

After publishing the file to Energy BI Service navigate to Dataset settings and examine that “OneDrive refresh” is enabled. That is enabled by default anyway, by no means the much less, it’s good to know the place to search out it.

• Click on the workspace
• Hover over the specified dataset
• Click on “Schedule refresh”
• Develop “OneDrive refresh” to see if automated refresh is enabled

Observe:

You will need to know that the OneDrive refresh is totally different from Schedule refresh. After we join to a Energy BI report file (PBIX) saved in OneDrive for Enterprise from Energy BI Service, at any time when we edit the PBIX file in Energy BI Desktop and save the adjustments again to our OneDrive for Enterprise, the linked dataset (information mannequin) and report will probably be routinely refreshed if we setup the OneDrive refresh. So, if we added a brand new measure to the mannequin, the change will probably be propagated to the linked dataset within the Service. That is DIFFERENT from the Schedule refresh setting or once we manually refresh the dataset from the Service. If we require the dataset to be refreshed routinely from the linked information supply(s) then we have to setup the Schedule refresh. On this case the dataset from the Service will get information immediately from the underlying information supply(s) which implies the info refresh course of has nothing to do with the PBIX file saved in our OneDrive for Enterprise.

Execs & Cons

Whereas this technique works okay in some eventualities, it’s good to learn about its limitations. So listed here are some professionals and cons:

Execs

• It’s simple to make use of
• Simple to revive older variations
• Leveraging dataset automated refresh from OneDrive

Cons

• It’s not a correct supply management supporting code merge and branching methods
• Commentary is NOT at the moment obtainable, so you can not put feedback on every model to clarify what have modified
• The sharing technique is managed by the person who created the file not by the organisation
• Lack of check-out/check-in
• Lack of alerting

Model Management with Microsoft Groups/SharePoint On-line

You should use both Microsoft Groups or SharePoint On-line for model management.

Observe:

In the event you enabled Block basic workspace creation setting inside the Energy BI Admin Portal, then you definitely already prevented producing basic workspaces by creating Microsoft Groups group. Due to this fact, we have to create a group in Microsoft Groups individually, create a contemporary Workspace in Energy BI then hyperlink our fashionable Workspace from Energy BI to the Groups group. You may examine if the Block basic workspace creation setting is permits as under:

• After logging into Energy BI Service with a Energy BI Admin account
• Click on the Settings button from prime proper ()
• Click on Admin Portal
• Click on Teant Settings
• Underneath Workspace settings part increase the Block basic workspace creation and see if that is enabled for the whole organisation

Now let’s take a look at Groups. We now create a brand new Groups group per surroundings, add customers to the brand new group and add your PBIX recordsdata.

Finally you publish the reviews immediately from Energy BI Service.

The brand new Groups group seems as a “Traditional Workspace” in Energy BI Service, you may then improve the workspace to the brand new workspace expertise to leverage new options and improved safety. In the event you want to take action:

Tip:

Don’t forget to vary the info sources in Energy BI Desktop to level to the proper information supply surroundings.

Sync along with your Native Drive

For extra comfort and keep away from downloading the recordsdata and importing after you make adjustments you may merely synchronise your recordsdata so that you at all times have a neighborhood copy of it in your arduous drive. So you may open the PBIX recordsdata immediately in Energy BI Desktop to make some adjustments and put it aside again to your arduous drive. Identical to OneDrive, your adjustments will probably be written again to Groups.

Examine-out/Examine-in

When utilizing Microsoft Groups you could have the flexibility to check-out a file. To take action observe the steps under:

• Navigate to a desired Groups group
• Click on “Recordsdata”
• Hover-over the file and click on ellipsis button
• Click on “Extra”
• Click on “Try”

The file will mark as checked out. So this file is now solely obtainable to you.

You and now open the file in Energy BI desktop to make the adjustments (by the synced listing) and save the file.

Now from Groups:

• Hover-over the file
• Click on ellipsis button -> Extra -> Examine in
• To envision-in the adjustments you’ll want to put in some feedback in regards to the adjustments which is actually useful

Restoring an Older Model

At present you can not restore an older model of the file immediately from Microsoft Groups. Nonetheless, you are able to do so from SharePoint.

• In Microsoft Groups click on “Open in SharePoint”
• Over-over a desired file -> click on ellipsis button -> Model historical past
• choose an older model of the file and click on “Restore”

Different SharePoint On-line Options

There are another options obtainable from SharePoint On-line. On this part we have a look at two of them that are extra related to model management and governance.

Alert me

You may setup alerts so you’re notified as quickly as a file is modified. In SharePoint On-line:

• Hover-over a file
• Click on “Alert me”
• Setup an alert

Compliance particulars

If you have already got some safety and compliance insurance policies in place you may apply a few of these to your recordsdata in SharePoint On-line. For example, you may apply “Retention” coverage to the recordsdata so if somebody unintentionally deletes a file you may later get well that file from “Recycle bin” folder. Or you could have a coverage to completely stop file deletion. The recordsdata which can be protected by retention insurance policies stay in SharePoint for a sure time period. For example within the under instance the file retains for 7 years, after that point it should be audited by an admin earlier than deletion. To set add retention labels to the recordsdata observe the steps under:

• Open the folder in SharePoint On-line
• Hover-over a desired file
• Click on ellipsis button -> Extra -> Compliance particulars
• Click on “Label Standing” hyperlink
• Apply a label from the dropdown listing
• Click on Save

Learn extra about Retention Insurance policies right here.

Execs & Cons

Whereas this technique works actually good for collaboration, but it surely at the moment has some limitations. Listed here are some professionals and cons:

Execs

• It’s simple to make use of
• Commentary is offered on this technique
• Whereas it’s built-in with SharePoint On-line sharing methods might be ruled by SharePoint
• Examine-out/check-in performance
• Establishing alerts
• Making use of retention labels
• Leveraging dataset automated refresh from OneDrive

Cons

• It’s not a correct supply management supporting code merge and branching methods
• Not all options immediately supported inside Microsoft Groups. It’s generally fairly complicated to modify to SharePoint On-line to do some actions like restoring an older model

Tip:

Within the above eventualities the method of selling recordsdata from dev listing to UAT and from there to Manufacturing might be automated utilizing a mix of instruments corresponding to Energy Automate and Approval apps obtainable in Workplace 365 which is out of scope of this submit. It wants a devoted weblog submit.

Have you ever ever used any of the above strategies? Are you utilizing one other method? Please share your ideas with us within the feedback part under.