Do you know the Power BI version control features?

To follow best practices for version control for Power BI reports you must know about the following features:

• Power BI Desktop projects (PBIP)

• Git integration in Power BI Service via Microsoft Fabric

  • Requires either Fabric capacity or a Power BI Premium per User license
  • Currently only integrates with Git repos in Azure DevOps

The following video provides an overview of these features.

Video: Empower every BI professional to do more with Microsoft Fabric | OD06 (Watch from min 5:00 to 13:00)

1. Convert all your Power BI reports to the PBIP format

   • First enable Power BI Projects in Power BI Desktop - File | Option Settings | Options | Preview features | Power BI project (.pbip) save option
   • Second "Save As" all your .pbix files as .pbip

   

   

   • Converting reports to the PBIP format decomposes it into the following artifacts.
   • A Dataset folder, which contains files and folders representing a Power BI dataset
   • A Reports folder, which contains the report settings, metadata for custom visuals, etc.

   

2. Commit the PBIP artifacts into a Git repository in an Azure DevOps project. Note, as of this writing Power BI's Git integration only works with Azure DevOps.

   Note: Once you convert the report Power BI Desktop will save a copy of the data into a file called cache.abf which gets stored in a ".pbi" folder inside the Dataset folder. This file should not be saved in version control. You can create a .gitignore file to prevent Git from committing it to the repository.

   

   

3. Connect a workspace in Power BI Service with a branch in the Git repo in Azure DevOps