Continuous deployment with Power BI and DevOps and Power BI Projects (PBIP)

With Power BI, continuous deployment with appropriate fabric licensing and working together on a Power BI project are possible. In this blog entry I would like to show how this works. There are also other ways, with other technologies, but here I am looking at the Microsoft technologies that are natively available with appropriate licensing. First I create a new project in DevOps. Of course, we can also use existing projects.

In the next step, I initialize the repo

If you clone this, you can transfer this repo to your own computer using Visual Studio, for example. Even if the folder is initially empty, the objects that should be transferred to the online folder can be saved in this folder.

Next, open Power BI and create the report.

In the save as dialog, select the file type pbip so that the report is saved as a solution in the synchronized folder:

If you now take a close look at the synchronized folder, you will see that the report has been stored in individual parts. Data is not included here.

If you now switch to Visual Studio, the files can be uploaded to the repo.

Now the data or the report is available online

Now you can create the connection in the properties of the workspace

**You can choose from different branches, depending on how you develop. After saving, the workspace syncs with the repo.**

Now you can develop the report either online or offline. If you edit four of the report, it is necessary to synchronize it. When you call up the report, no data is displayed because the semantic model does not contain any data and none has been saved locally within the project. It is therefore necessary that the semantic model is updated online.

**Deployment pipelines can then be used to deploy the reports and models to further levels for testing and productive operation**

I recommend going this route because no PBIP solution file is created from online to offline. This means that several team members can now work on the report at the same time and also provide it.