New to PowerBI - What is a good workflow for multiple workstations?

[Black_magic100]

So I am new to Power BI and the whole idea of my reports being an actual pbix project file seems very odd.  If I want to work from on my laptop, but also on my work PC what is the best workflow?  USB is obviously not the correct answer here.

[v-yuta-msft · Accepted solution]

@Black_magic100,

To be general, I would you can upload your pbix file to onedrive then connect to onedrive in power bi service. Or you can create the the dataset and report using dataflow. 

Regards,

Jimmy Tao

[v-yuta-msft · Accepted solution]

@Black_magic100,

To be general, I would you can upload your pbix file to onedrive then connect to onedrive in power bi service. Or you can create the the dataset and report using dataflow. 

Regards,

Jimmy Tao

[Black_magic100]

Okay it is still not letting me edit replies for whatever reason, but I have a new workflow doing what you said however I want to make sure this is effective.

I created a workspace and connected a dataflow to my Azure SQL Database.  I will keep the PBIx files on my personal drive.  I already tried connecting between PCs with their own version of desktop installed and it seemed to update within a few minutes so I can seamlessly work on PBI files and have the data be updated.

If my reports are all different will I need to create multiple workspaces as otherwise I will be imported every single table into my reports?  Could I just have one workspace, import all tables, and then when I create a new report connect that data source and delete uneccessary tables within power BI or is that bad?

[Black_magic100]

Okay so it won't let me edit my response above, but I am trying to connect via Onedrive Personal and it is not giving me the option. I do not have a license on my organization account and I'd rather not go through the beauracracy to have corporate buy a license for my organizational account. As per the documentation linked below you should be able to select Onedrive Personal as an option, but I do not see that. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-get-data-from-files

[Black_magic100]

My dataset is a SQL server in azure that truncates each night and refreshes. The DBA I am working with created a SSIS package to automatically recreate all the tables with the newly updated rows each night at 11:55 PM ET. Will the onedrive way still work?

[MFelix]

Hi @Black_magic100,

This depends on what you want to achieve you can work on a report on Power BI desktop but also on the website check the links below:

PBI service vs PBI Desktop

Query Editor online

Regards,

MFelix

[stretcharm]

Yeah its a bit harder than other reports systems like SSRS. I use source control (TFS) at work and save the documents with either small data sets or export as a template which saves without data. However if I'm just playing with a document and want to share with the team I put it on a shared folder. You can get errors with this if someone has the doc open already. Once it's read to use I put it on our PowerBI Report server (on premise) or you could also publish to the PowerBI service. Non work I tend to keep and test files on Onedrive. Ideally we could have a PowerBI Project like SSRS/SSAS in visual studio that lets you work on the file, but saves the code to source control without the data in a much easy way.

[Black_magic100 · Accepted solution]

I ended up creating a dataflow to automatically update the data from Azure SQL database and then saved the actual files to my Onedrive.  Seems to work pretty good.  No idea if this is a perfect workflow.

[v-yuta-msft]

@Black_magic100,

Great to hear that, would you please kindly mark the correct answer to help other members find it more quickly? Your contribution will be much appreciated.

Regards,

Jimmy Tao