Confusion over building Reports in Service or in Desktop

[DebbieE]

I always do training based on the assumption that you should create your reports in Desktop, publish them to service, created dashboards and then publish an app

However, you can connect to your data in Service and even create reports in service

So with that in mind, people have been asking me, what is the point to doing it in desktop when you can do it all in Service.

How do I answer that question? 

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

I get this question a lot too @DebbieE
Here's my two cents on the subject:
Desktop offers three views: Report, Data, Model AND it offers Query Editor.
Power BI Service offers: Dashboards, Reports, Datasets.

If what you want to do can be done in the Report view in Desktop, choose your favourite place to edit - just be consistent because otherwise you can end up with copies and different versions of the report (they don't sync). You can always download the pbix file for major updates (provided the data source allows for this and you don't have a large incremental refresh data source for example).

If you want to do DAX, or anything in Data, Model or Power Query then you MUST use desktop.

Some data sources only connect directly to service though, so have to weigh up the pros and cons of each.

Great question, and keen to hear other people's ideas.

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

I get this question a lot too @DebbieE
Here's my two cents on the subject:
Desktop offers three views: Report, Data, Model AND it offers Query Editor.
Power BI Service offers: Dashboards, Reports, Datasets.

If what you want to do can be done in the Report view in Desktop, choose your favourite place to edit - just be consistent because otherwise you can end up with copies and different versions of the report (they don't sync). You can always download the pbix file for major updates (provided the data source allows for this and you don't have a large incremental refresh data source for example).

If you want to do DAX, or anything in Data, Model or Power Query then you MUST use desktop.

Some data sources only connect directly to service though, so have to weigh up the pros and cons of each.

Great question, and keen to hear other people's ideas.

[DebbieE]

thats fantastic,

I can definitely explain the DAX angle. I thought that Power Query was available in Service now because of the dataflows though?

But I can totally go with 'If you want to do DAX, or anything in Data, Model  then you MUST use desktop'

I still say always go with Desktop. I find the ability to edit reports in Service so confusing because if someone amends the desktop versions its going to overwrite anything that happens in Service anyway

[AllisonKennedy]

@DebbieE Yeah, it's easy to get two different versions of the report if you're not careful, and since desktop gives you DAX and Data Model, you often end up needing to go back there anyway so it is probably still best to just recommend using Desktop for editing reports.

I forgot about themes, so love the visual @Sumanth_23 has posted too. 🙂

UPDATE: Oh, and regarding Power Query in Service - that does only work with dataflows as far as I know right? So if the report doesn't use dataflows then you still need desktop.

[Sumanth_23 · Accepted solution]

hi @DebbieE - Just adding a visual and dots that differentiate Power BI Desktop and Service

Some of the unique features of Power BI Desktop include:

• Data transformation, modeling and modeling
• Calculated columns
• Python y DAX
• Creating RLS

Some of the unique features of Power BI Service include:

• Panels
• Share
• RLS management
• Gateway connections

[DebbieE]

perfect visual to get that question answered.

Thank you

[PaulDBrown]

@DebbieE 

This topic might be worthy of a community blog post. Just a thought...

[DebbieE]

Really good idea. I might have a look at that