Dynamically deploy changes from one master report to several client reports

[nick8181]

Hi everyone,

There is a challenge I would need your help with.

So far our process of creating new reports for differrenct clients has been to create one master pbix for client A, pointing to Table A and publish the report. We would reuse the same pbix file for Client B by pointing to Table B, publish the report for Client B etc... Each time we need to make a change to the master file or create reports for new clients we need to modify the source pbix, create versions for each client and publish over the existing reports. 

The idea would be to dynamically create reports for new clients or update the published existing reports of clients A, B and C after editing one master PBIX file.  Clients A, B and C have their data in the same database and their respective data tables have exactly the same structure. 

Would it be possible to have one master PBIX from which new reports could be generated for new clients or to which changes would be made that would automatically update the published existing reports for client A, B and C on their respective client page (reports are published and shared with the clients on Django).

Each client would have their own PBIX file and modifying a "Master" pbix would modify the PBIX file for client A, the PBIX for client B and so on. 

Has anyone been able to achieve something similar?

Thanks for your help!

Nick

[artemus]

Sounds like you just need to provide PBIT files instead of PBIX files (just choose template when you do a save-as). PBIT files do not contain any of the data in the report, just the visuals, and power query code. When a PBIT file is opened, the user is presented with a dialog box to fill in any parameters that are in the report.

[nick8181]

Thank you all for your suggestions!

We did consider the template and parameters option but we would like to have a process in place that minimizes manual work as much as possible.

Would it be possible to have a script using M, let's say in an Excel file that would contain the DB, schema, and table information for each client, and running the script outside of the PBIT or PBIX file model would automatically change the parameters in the model?

Thank you,

Nick

[v-eachen-msft]

Hi @nick8181 ,

According to your requirements, you could use parameter in query editor.

Here are some links about parameter for your reference.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-query-parameters

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-parameters

[lbendlin]

Another option (depending on your licence type) is a shared dataset as the master, and Row Level Security (or dataset parameters) for the client reports/apps.