Connect to an existing Power BI data model

[kirby]

One of the biggest frustrations I have 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 we develop 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

It does seems like a bit of an oversight that this functionality exists in Excel but not in Power BI desktop. Is there any plan to include this functionality in the near future?

Thanks

[MattAllington]

I came to exactly the same conclusion today as well. You should start a new idea at ideas.powerbi.com

[kirby]

Thank Matt. Just posted it 

[dramus]

Added to the votes. It would be nice to be able to create a single data model and then just use whatever tables were necessary in a report.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

 @dramus@kirby@MattAllington Looking at this from the other direction, if the functionality to export the model was there, we could do the development in the Service. (I think this would result in the same benefit, I mention it, because there is a request that has a lot of votes for exporting the model to PBIX - but the PM mentions this scenerio in the "Under Review".  - Might be worth tossing some votes on this one as well since it's much further up the food chain of ideas.

[dramus]

@Seth_C_BauerI'm also wondering if using a Power BI Desktop Template file (.pbit) might also be the way to go. You can use the template to create the model, data connections, measures, etc. and then build the visualizations out as needed.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@dramus I see this as two seperate issues.

1) I want to develop in the Service and have flexibility to version/backup/save my reports so that if something gets corrputed or lost, I can recover. Currently, if you develop in the Service exclusively and something goes wrong, you are in a world of hurt.

2) Templates are a great starting point for trying to drive consistency, but they are just a starting point. You'll still end up with different Desktop files having different model elements and you quickly end up with not being able to garauntee the same consistent model. Business process has to take the place of trying to manage multiple copies of the same data source.

If you want one source of truth, your only option is doing your work in SSAS. 1 model/cube where all the business logic exists. Then the only thing that Power BI does is worry about visualizing that information.

I'd love to work in the Service consistently, because right now I have to publish large numbers of reports that all use the same data source. If I develop in the Service, I can have 1 data source and x number of reports. But I currently have to re-publish the same data source with different reports and each PBIX name creates a new dataset even though it all connects to the same Tabular model.