Managing Life cycle for Power BI Reports

[rajulshah]

Hello,

We have reports to develop for a company which has multiple clients and for whom we need to develop reports.

I have dilemma for approach on how to manage DEV and PROD Reports. I have come up with a solution that has two workspaces for each client for DEV and PROD Reports. Looking at the scenario, it will be a mess if I create DEV and PROD workspace for each client. We also need to embed these reports.

I would like to know how others are managing such scenarios. Is there any automated way to manage this?

Please guide on how to manage DEV and PROD Reports in a better way.

[vinaypugalia · Accepted solution]

Hello Rajul,

We follow the below approach - 

1. Have separate App Workspaces for DEV & PROD. We do this to ensure that we do not hit the 10GB Workspace limit early & ensure that our developers have permission to only the DEV Workspace. When needed to deploy on PROD, the senior developers (how has got the permission on PROD Workspace) just do it.

2. While deployment on PROD, we need to ensure that the DataSource is changed to the one pointing to PROD DataSource. We do this manually as of now. Not sure of any automated way for this.

The above approach is taken to ensure that we never mess the PROD environment while development.

Hope, this helps!

[Anonymous]

The answer will ultimately depend on you and your solution.  You've mentioned you have reports that go out to your clients?  How are you publishing these reports so the clients see it?

I personally use the 2 workspace approach, however I don't have dedicated DEV workspaces for a particular project.  Instead I have some more generic DEV workspaces which i publish to and clear out whenever they are not required.

You could the DEV and PROD reports side by side in the same workspace, with a DEV denoted name and tick off for it to be published to the App.  This would hide it from the users but allow you to develop and test.

[rajulshah]

Hello @Anonymous ,

Thank you for the response. I am sharing the reports via embedding them in their custom application. So, I am not using apps here.

Hence, I am thinking of the two workspace approach here.

Does it make sense?

[Anonymous]

If you are embedding the solutions, your code would be handling what is shown.  The advantage of 2 workspaces is you wouldn't need to rename any files before publishing.  Alternatively you could use the same workspace but simply rename the project file before publish.

i.e.  MyProject_DEV.pbix is what you work on, but you rename it before publishing the production version.

This solution adds a couple of extra clicks to publishing, but does remove some risks.  It also avoids your initial concern of too many workspaces.

[rajulshah]

Yes, got your point! @Anonymous 

But for DEV and PROD, each time we publish the report, we need to change the datasource to point to the PROD source. Is there any way to automate this? Or set it only one time?

[Anonymous]

Inside your project file, where the "Edit Queries" button is, there is a 'Data Source Settings'.  You can modify the data source in there and it should update your project file.  Not exactly automation, but if you have multiple queries it can speed this up for you.

I generally have my PROD and DEV models point to same PROD data sources, unless i'm testing new data/views/'stored prodecures'.  I can see reasons for having a DEV data source, particularly if your PROD is sizable.