Best practices to create PowerBI reports with collaboration in team

[anandsoftweb]

Hello Guys,

As Power BI are giving so much features and continously evolving tool, So here I would like to know some good practices or approach to develop reports within team development where multiple BI developer can work together and publish reports using PowerBI features.

Please provide your thoughts and inputs or any method which can be helpful to create n no of reports /dahsboards and it can be easily collabrate 

Thanks,

Anand

[dbuchter]

Our team is having some difficulty with this since we have Power BI developers as well as UX/UI designers working the same files. Since there is no check-in/check-out functionality, we have to rely on letting each other know when we are working on a file. It is complicated by the fact that the designers primarily work in the service since they have no responsibilities for data modelling or advanced coding and they are using macs. Our developers on the other hand, primarily work with PBIX files. We typically have a Non-prod and a Prod workspace for each project so that only finalized/approved reports are posted in production, but we still have overwrite issues between team members and missed updates to prod.

Does anyone have a more structured solution that is woking for them?

[AlexHealth]

Hi @dbuchter , 

we are facing a pretty similar issue. 

One way that could be used for check-out functionality is MS Teams. Here you can enable additional columns for check-out in the folders.

However it would require that you download the report to your desktop everytime.

Cheers,

Alex

[v-yulgu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @anandsoftweb,

One option is to directly share .pbix file with your report development team via copying file or sending email.

An other option is creating an app workspace, adding all the report developers into this group. You can share your reports with all members inside this worksapce. Power BI app workspaces are great places to collaborate with your colleagues on dashboards, reports, and datasets to create apps. After you create a Power BI Desktop file, if you publish it to your Power BI app workspace, then everyone in your workspace can collaborate (view/edit) on it.

For more detailed introduction about app workspace, please refer to below links:

Collaborate in your Power BI app workspace

Create a app workspace to collaborate in Power BI

Best regards,
Yuliana Gu

[dbuchter]

I think part of the trouble is that we are passing the file back and forth, ex: The developer will create a shell that drings in the correct data from a separate data file. Then the designers will jump in an implement the UI then we have stakeholder reviews which typically can change both data and UI elements so the devs and the designers need to get back into the file. This could go for a couple of rounds. These interchanges is when people are modifying files at the same time which causes problems. Passing a PBIX file through sharepoint isn't a bad idea, but like I said, the designers are on macs, so they have to run virtual machines to edit PBIX files in Windows. It just gets messy and none of the designers really want to do that.