If you have been working in Power BI and use Power BI Desktop to create a data model and perhaps some of your reports, chances are from time to time you will want to change the Power BI Desktop file. Over time the data model created in the file, commonly known as a pbix file after the file suffix, may need to change. Updating the pbix file may not work how you expect. If you want to be able to update pbix files, you need to save them on your One Drive. If you want multiple people to be able to maintain the Power BI Files, the best way to accomplish this is to use the Power BI Workgroup One Drive. While you can share a One Drive file with other people without creating a workspace, that file will not be visible to others from within Power BI as the location isn’t exposed to other people in the web interface.
What features do you get with Workspace and an Exchange License?
I heard recently from someone who listened to my PASS BA Webinar and didn’t understand why I said that one need to have to have an Office 365 Exchange client to use workspaces in Power BI. It is possible to create workspaces without an Exchange License, as the only thing required to create workspaces is a Power BI Pro License. While one can create workspaces without having an Office 365 Exchange client, chances are that isn’t all that you want for a team to be able to work together. When a workspace is created, often times it is created because you want a team of people to collaborate on the model and the reports. Collaboration can include modification to existing reports, data models or using shared content packs. To modify the data model, everyone needs to be able to edit the pbix file containing the data model and view the files from within Power BI. If a group of people want to edit each other’s the pbix files, a One Drive location where Power BI’s web client and all of the members of the workspace can access the file is necessary to make this collaboration happen. If you already have an Exchange server, you can still continue to use that as you don’t need to use the mail features of the Exchange license. However, since the ability to create groups which share One Drives is an Exchange feature, not a Power BI feature, you will need to purchase a license for each user in the group in order to have a One Drive area to share files. If you do not have an Exchange license, members of the group will be able to share Content Packs and Power BI Reports, but not the Power BI data model created in Power BI Desktop.
Let me know if you find this information helpful or if you have any other questions regarding team collaboration with Power BI. Feel free to contact me on twitter or by posting a comment on the blog.
Yours Always
Ginger Grant
Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur
Hi Ginger. I wholeheartedly agree with your recommendation to utilize group workspaces for collaboration. On numerous occasions, I have re-uploaded a revised data model within the pbix file. Although it requires a logout/login to see the changes, the existing file does get updated. The key here to making this work on a recent project was to upload nothing but the data model in the pbix, to create all reports independently in the web (this is so that report modifications in the web are not lost if the data model is re-uploaded). After revising the underlying data model in a single pbix file, the update is handled just fine — i.e., the existing file is updated ok and the separate report files are preserved/not overwritten by potentially older report versions. Am hoping you can provide a few more details (the support url isn’t working–I tried several times).Thanks.
Melissa —
Thanks for letting me know about the link not working. I’ve fixed the post so that the link is now working, which hopefully provides more clarification.
Regards,
Ginger
Hi, Ginger. Thanks for posting this. The process of replacing the data set (going to Get data) is less than intuitive. I hope they add an option to replace it in the menu when you click on the data set. My experience matches Melissa’s: If you name your pbix file the same and allow the version on PowerBI.com to be replaced, you can indeed update your pbix file. But I found that I had to log out (not just refresh or close the browser) and log back in to PowerBI.com before I could see the changes. I hope that will change in the future.