{"id":15653,"date":"2021-12-02T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devwww.3cloudsolutions.com\/post\/digging-into-power-bi-deployment-pipelines-3\/"},"modified":"2024-04-08T14:17:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T21:17:33","slug":"digging-into-power-bi-deployment-pipelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/digging-into-power-bi-deployment-pipelines\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging into Power BI Deployment Pipelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Power BI Deployment Pipelines are a strategic feature that allows users to better manage content across their organizations. By leveraging this powerful tool, users can simplify the deployment process and ensure security of potentially sensitive data. With a quick glance, users can compare content across Development, Test, and Production stages within their environments and the straightforward user interface allows users to quickly pinpoint any differences between stages, as well as identify potential risks. Deployment between stages is as simple as the click of a button and users can either deploy all the available content simultaneously or specify selected content between stages. Each deployment stage can have different parameters, allowing for data isolation and better protection of sensitive information. In this article, we\u2019ll break down the specifics of deployment pipelines, and discuss how you can best leverage this tool within your organization for optimal efficiency.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Power<\/p>\n

Prerequisites<\/h2>\n

To utilize deployment pipelines, you must be a Pro user in a Premium capacity<\/a><\/span>, or you must have a <\/span>Premium Per User (PPU)<\/span><\/span><\/a> license. Further, the workspace must have the <\/span>new workspace experience<\/a><\/span>, not classic mode. All the workspaces in the pipeline must reside within a capacity, but users can have different capacities for different workspaces in the pipeline. Ultimately, the Production stage requires a Premium Workspace; however, to minimize costs, the Development and Test stages could use Azure <\/span>A SKU or PBI Embedded<\/span><\/span><\/a> instead.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About Pipeline Stages<\/h2>\n

Creation\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Creating a deployment pipeline is a simple process – once you have a workspace in the first stage, Power BI Service creates a copy of that workspace into the next stage. Power BI only copies over the metadata of the content to the next stage, not the data itself. Specifically, Power BI copies over the data sources, parameters, report visuals\/pages, and item relationships to the next stage, and then overwrites the content in the next stage. Since only the metadata is copied over to the next stage, you must do a full refresh on the dataset to populate the data itself into the next stage.<\/p>\n

There are three stages in the pipeline: Development, Test, and Production, however, you do not have to utilize all three stages. You could select any two stages if needed, allowing for a truly customized experience.<\/p>\n

Stage Details<\/h3>\n

The Development stage is typically used for building and designing new content. Development data is typically a smaller subset of the Production dataset to allow report builders to work quickly without experiencing slow runtimes. The Test stage is for testing the new content created in Development and should target a small audience of quality assurance testers. In Test, users typically load larger amounts of data than in Development. The goal of Test is to troubleshoot the functionality and design of the app and prepare the app for the end users. The Production stage is the final version to share with the business users. Production should hold the full dataset intended for the end users.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is best practice to configure the workspace access according to the stages of the pipeline. For example, only a small number of users should have access<\/a><\/span> to the Pre-production stages in order to prevent confusion or harmful data exposure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to manage the historical versions of the PBIX files, you can <\/span>auto-sync the PBIX files with OneDrive<\/span><\/span><\/a> to keep the latest version updated and retrieve previous versions. You should only auto-sync files in the initial Development stage, not Test or Production. If you do auto-sync files in later stages, there will be problems deploying content across the pipeline.<\/span><\/p>\n

Limitations<\/span><\/h3>\n

There are several factors to consider before creating a deployment pipeline. First, you must be an admin of the workspace before you can assign the workspace to a pipeline. The workspace must also fall under the Premium capacity category. Further, one workspace cannot be assigned to multiple different pipelines – a workspace can only exist in one pipeline. Finally, the following items are unsupported: <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n