Saving Bookmarks over reports, Lost personal Bookmarks after replacing report

[Anonymous]

After some major changes I've decided to re-upload an power BI report from the desktop to the service and upload it by the App.
A few days later I received a message from one of our user that they've lost their personal Bookmarks.

Is there any way to save bookmarks to use them over (new) reports? Otherwise, the only solution to keep them is by updating your reports in stead of replacing this Right??

Anyone have any solution/experience with this?

[AndreaCBS]

Does anyone found a way to avoid the losing of personal bookmarks? I have the same problem even if I save a copy from one workspace to another.

Any suggestions?

[abristow]

According to MS documentation on bookmarks: 

• Generally, your personal bookmarks will not be affected if the report designer updates or republishes the report. However, if the designer makes major changes to the report, such as removing fields used by a personal bookmark, then you will receive an error message the next time you attempt to open that bookmark.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/consumer/end-user-bookmarks

No specific reference to how pushing through a pipeline impacts personal bookmarks, unfortunately 

[klp97]

Hi, I'm bumping this thread in the hopes of getting an answer to my recent post: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Help-Users-lost-personal-bookmarks-report-was-not-changed-o...

Can someone confirm whether republishing an app results in a GUID change and therefore deletes users' personal bookmarks? 

[rvandint]

This issue came up within my organisation as well. Is there any update? We deliver reports via apps. Most of the time develepment is done in Power BI Desktop and published to the serrvice. After a Major update or replacement of the report the bookmark from the end user is gone. Is there a way to avoid this?

[sameershaikh]

Same question here:

Even when I try to re publish the report after adding some new pages/ visuals to the existing report from Desktop to Service, Personal bookmarks are lost and need to re create them once again.

Is there any way to preserve the personal bookmark when we re publish the report from Desktop to Service ?

Thanks 

[Icey]

Hi @Anonymous ,

When you republish a report, it will be deleted first and then added to the workspace. So, your app consumers will lose all customizations such as bookmarks, comments, etc.

You need to change your report in Power BI Service and then update the app.

Best Regards,

Icey

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[mvasek]

When you republish a report, it will be deleted first and then added to the workspace. So, your app consumers will lose all customizations such as bookmarks, comments, etc.

You need to change your report in Power BI Service and then update the app.

Best Regards,

Icey

Do you have an example in which you accomplish this process, I know I have attempted this several times with the same result, all personal book marks are removed. 

[LottaC]

This is incorrect. The whole idea is to not have this behavior. Especially the whole idea behind deployment piplines - i.e., the user is not affected by report changes for ex. personal bookmarks etc. 
Yes if major changes are done - fileds used in bookmars settings, major changes in the data model. 
But other than that - no. 

[abristow]

@Icey I'm using pipeline deployment from development to test to production. 

Do you know if the file will be considered the "same" if I make changes in PBI Service [Development] and have it pushed thru the pipeline to the end-user app?

Thanks for any insighs you can provide!

[mvasek]

I have several attempts of re-publishing my reports, including ones that don't affect fields which users have for their book marks. bottom line once you publish from your desktop app, you have to use the online service to do any edits, otherwise bookmarks disappear. Until this issue is resolved, we lose half of the editing power in this tool. 

[LottaC]

"Do you have an example in which you accomplish this process, I know I have attempted this several times with the same result, all personal book marks are removed. "

Yes it should be considered to be the same report when you deploy via a pipline. 
If it is not you will get 2 reports with the sam name.
Via the the pipline you can compare the workspaces content and see if a report is considered to be new or to be updated (changed).
This would not affect the end-users bookmarks normally. There have been an issue with this in Service. Which hopefully now is resolved. 
But the general "rules" for bookmarks apply - supplied in the link by abristow.
This is how we deploy our reports to the end-users (and then via an app) and the bookmarks has generally remained after an update to the report, apart form during the recent issue.

[dataloreous]

Same question here - is there a reliable way to deploy reports through CI/CD without losing personal bookmarks?

[ErikSn]

Did you ever find an answer to this? We have a prod workspace that we want to add to a deployment pipeline without losing personal bookmarks.