ntroduction

Completed100 XP
 1 minute

You've likely had the chance to load and transform data from numerous
sources, build visuals, create DAX equations, and even publish a report or
two to Microsoft Power BI. The next step on your data analysis journey is to
share these reports with your wider audiences and organizations. You can
accomplish this task in a workspace, which is a feature of Power BI. A
workspace is a centralized repository in which you can collaborate with
colleagues and teams to create collections of reports and dashboards.

Workspaces offer the following benefits:

 Focused collaboration efforts. You can use workspaces to house reports

and dashboards for use by multiple teams.
 Ability to share and present reports and dashboards in a single
environment.
 Assurance that the highest level of security is maintained by controlling
who can access datasets, reports, and dashboards.

This module will discuss several tasks that are focused on helping you to
create and manage a workspace in Power BI. Additionally, you will learn
about importing and updating assets in a workspace, configuring data
protection, troubleshooting data, and much more.

Distribute a report or dashboard

Completed100 XP

 7 minutes

Consider a scenario where you have created a few reports for the Sales team
at Tailwind Traders. The issue that you have encountered is determining how
to make these reports viewable and shareable. By creating a workspace in
Power BI, you can house your reports in one location, make them shareable,
collaborate with other teams, and update reports.

Create a workspace

Your first task is to create a workspace by following these steps:

1. Go to Power BI service.

2. Select the Workspaces drop-down menu.

3. Select the Create a workspace button at the bottom of the resulting
panel.

4. In the Create a workspace window, enter information in the Workspace

name and Description fields and then upload a Workspace image.
 5. In the Advanced drop-down menu, you can create a Contact list of users
who will receive notifications if issues with the workspace occur.

By default, these users are the workspace admins, but you can also add
specific users. You can also add this workspace to a specific OneDrive and
then choose whether this workspace will be a part of a dedicated capacity or
not. Dedicated capacities are Power BI Premium features that ensure that
your workspace will have its own computational resources as opposed to
sharing resources with other users.

6. After you have filled out pertinent fields on the Create a

workspace window, select Save.

You have now created a workspace.

You can complete the process of creating a workspace by using the new
workspace experience. We recommend that you use the modern workspace
experience over the classic workspace experience, unless the classic
workspace is expressly needed.

Assign workspace roles

Now that you've successfully created a workspace, the Sales team wants to
collaborate with other teams to build additional dashboards and reports. As
the workspace owner, you want to ensure that appropriate access is given to
members of the Products team because their team includes stakeholders
and developers. Workspace roles allow you to designate who can do what
within a workspace.

The abilities of role types in a workspace include:

 Admin

o Add/remove other users

o Publish, update, and/or share an app in a workspace

o Create, edit, delete, and publish reports and content in a workspace

o View and interact with reports and dashboards in a workspace

o Configure data refreshes

 Member
 o Can add users with lower permissions

o Cannot remove users

o Cannot delete the workspace

o Cannot update the metadata about the workspace

 Contributor

o Cannot add or remove users

o Cannot publish, update, or edit an app in a workspace unless given

this ability by admins/members

o Can create, update, and publish content and reports within a

workspace

o Can schedule data refreshes

 Viewer

o Cannot add or remove users

o Can only view a report or dashboard in a workspace

o Can read data that is stored in workspace dataflows

Note

If the workspace is backed by a Premium capacity, a non-Pro user can view

content within the workspace under the Viewer role.

To assign these roles to users, go to the workspace that you've created and,
in the upper-left corner of the ribbon, select Access.
In the resulting Access window, you can add email addresses of individual
users, mail-enabled security groups, distribution lists, Microsoft 365 groups,
and regular security groups, and then assign them to their specific roles. You
can also change the user's assigned role at the bottom of the page and
delete the user from the workspace by selecting the ellipsis (...) next to their
name.
Create and configure an app

After creating an app workspace and assigning your collaborator-specific

roles, you want to add content to your app workspace. Content can be in the
form of reports, dashboards, datasets, dataflows, and so on. An app is a
published, read-only window into your data for mass distribution and
viewing. When ready to share apps with your users, you can publish the app.
This process requires a Power BI Pro license. Consuming and viewing an app
requires a Pro license or it must be backed by a Premium capacity.

When you have added your content to the app workspace, you can create
the app. Go to your workspace, and on the ribbon, select + New, as shown
in the following screenshot. In this ribbon, you can choose to create a new
report, dataset, streaming dataset, or dataflow, to name a few. Selecting any
one of these options will generate a window where you can enter the name
of the app and select the source of the report (for example, the dataset that
is used to create a report).
You can also select the Get Data button in the lower-left corner of the
navigation bar, and then import already-existing reports from Power BI
Desktop and add them to your workspace app.

You can also configure your app and turn on the option to include the report
or dashboard in the app when you publish, as shown in the following
screenshot. If you do not want to include this report or dashboard in the app,
then you can turn off this option.

When you are ready to publish your app with its collection of reports,
dashboards, and datasets, return to the workspace and select Create app in
the upper-right corner of the ribbon.

This action retrieves the following window, where you can build your app by
naming it, adding a description, and adding an app logo or theme color, if
necessary.
Under the Navigation tab, you can change the order in which the content is
oriented for the user by creating a custom navigation pane. For instance, you
can change the name of the content, change the link, and then add it to a
specific section on the navigation pane. You can also add content that is
external to Power BI through a link. This external content can also be
included within the content area. For example, a YouTube video or
PowerPoint slide deck has to be an embed URL, not the raw URL
Under the Permissions tab, you can grant access to all users in your
organization or choose which users have access. You can also give your
users build and share permissions, which means that they can create and
share the content in the app. The Permissions tab provides a few other
options. With Build permissions, you can allow your users to connect to
underlying datasets so that they can reuse and build their own reports by
using the same dataset. Build permissions are required if your users want to
export the underlying data or build new content on top of the data. You can
also allow your users to only create a copy of the report to view in another
workspace, where they can modify and delete visuals according to their
needs. You can also give your users Share permissions so that they can
share underlying datasets and reports.
After making necessary edits, you can select Publish app, and your app will
be published. Then, you will get the following screen with a link that you can
share with your users.

Update workspaces

After publishing your app, you realize that you want to make updates within
your workspace.

To accomplish this task, return to the workspace, and make the necessary
updates in the reports or dashboards. The workspace acts as a staging area
where you can make any changes that you want, but they will not be added
to the app until you select Update app in the upper-right corner of the
ribbon (where you previously selected Publish app). Dataset and dataflow
updates are updated immediately. When you decide to update the app, you
can make changes to the Setup, Navigation, and Permissions tabs, and
when ready, you can select the Update app button.

For more information, see Publish an app in Power BI.

Monitor usage and performance

Completed100 XP

 2 minutes

Knowing about the usage and performance of your workspace is crucial

because it:

 Focuses your efforts for improvement. If you know the areas that
experience the worst performance, you can concentrate your efforts for
improvement in those areas.

 Quantifies the impact of your reports. Usage metrics help you determine
your reports' success.

These performance and usage metrics are available features that you can
use in a workspace. With these metrics, you can view who's using your
reports, what actions are being done on the reports, and what performance
issues exist.

For example, consider the continuing scenario where you work for Tailwind
Traders. You've successfully added reports to your workspace, published an
app, and begun the process of collaborating with the Products team.
Commentary begins to circulate around the company about how useful these
workspaces are, resulting in more users being added to the workspace. The
Sales team knows that performance might worsen with the increased
addition of users. Consequently, the Sales team has asked you to monitor
usage and performance of the workspace.
Configure and view usage metric reports

Usage metric reports are available for Power BI Pro users and can only be
accessed by users with the role types of Admin, Member, or Contributor.

To view usage metric reports, go to the pertinent workspace. Find the report
or dashboard that you want to see usage metrics for. For example, if you
want to see the usage metrics report for Sales Data, select the ellipsis (...),
and then select View usage metrics report from the drop-down menu.
When the usage metrics report is ready for viewing, you will receive a
prompt that will direct you to a dashboard. In the Report usage tab, you
can view such details as:

 Viewers per day, Unique viewers per day (which doesn't include
users who returned to the same reports multiple times), and Shares
per day charts
  Total Views, Total Viewers, and Total Shares KPI cards

 Total views and shares ranking (compares how your report is doing
in comparison to other reports in the app)

 Views by Users (details about each specific user that viewed the
dashboard)

You can also filter by the distribution method of the report (for example,
through sharing or from the workspace directly) and platform type (for
example, mobile or web).

You can also view performance metrics on the Report performance tab, as
shown in the following screenshot.
On the Report performance tab, you can view metrics such as:

 Typical opening time - How long it takes, at the fiftieth percentile, to

open the report.

 Opening time trend - How the typical opening time changes over
time. This metric can tell you how the report is performing as the
number of users starts to grow.

 Daily/7-Day Performance charts - Highlight the performance for 10,

50, and 90 percent of the open-report actions every day and over a
seven-day period.
  Filters for date, so you can see how the performance changes according
to the day.

For more information, see Monitor Usage Metrics.

Recommend a development life

cycle strategy
Completed100 XP

 7 minutes

The development process is iterative; it typically requires building an initial

solution, testing the solution in a different environment, returning to make
necessary revisions, and eventually releasing a final product. This process is
known as a development life cycle. This process can take place in several
different ways and in different environments.

To continue with the module scenario, the Sales team at Tailwind Traders is
impressed with the reports that you have delivered, and as they continue to
use the abilities of Power BI, they also want to maintain data and report
integrity without slowing development timelines. As a result, they have
asked you to create a development pipeline that will be used by all teams to
develop reports and dashboards. Power BI provides deployment pipelines
that you can use to help accelerate development and minimize errors.

Deployment pipeline (Premium)

The deployment pipeline feature in Power BI manages content in

dashboards, reports, and datasets between different environments in the
development life cycle. With this feature, you can develop and test Power BI
content in one centralized location and streamline the process before
deploying the final content to your users. This Power BI Premium feature
requires you to be a Capacity admin.

The advantages of using the deployment pipeline are:

 Increased productivity - Through this feature, you can reuse previous

deployment pipelines, ensuring that efforts aren't duplicated.

 Faster delivery of content - Report development becomes more

streamlined, meaning that it takes less time to get to production.
  Lower human intervention required - Having the ability to reuse
deployment pipelines means a decreased chance of error associated
with moving content from one environment to another.

Development environments

Typically, development and collaboration occur in different stages. Reports

and dashboards are built in and iterated on a series of controlled stages, or
environments, where several tasks occur:

 Development - The location in which dashboard developers or data

modelers can build new content with other developers. This stage is first
in the deployment pipeline.

 Test - Where a small group of users and user acceptance testers can
see and review new reports, provide feedback, and test the reports with
larger datasets for bugs and data inconsistencies before it goes into
production.

 Production - Where an expansive user audience can use tested reports

that are reliable and accurate. This stage is the final one of the
deployment pipeline.

You can choose which one of these development environments that you
want to include in your deployment pipeline, according to your business
needs. For example, you can choose to only include the Test and Production
environments, if necessary.

Configuration of deployment pipelines

In the scenario with Tailwind Traders, you want to create a deployment

pipeline. To configure a deployment pipeline, go to Power BI service, and
then follow these steps:

1. On the ribbon on the left side of the page, select Deployment pipelines, as
shown in the following screenshot.
2. On the resulting page, select Create a pipeline.

3. Create a deployment pipeline called SalesPipeline. Enter

the Pipeline name as SalesPipeline and enter a description, if
necessary.

4. Select Create, which will take you to the following screen.

This view shows you the steps of the development life
cycle: Development, Test, and Production.

5. To create your pipeline, assign workspaces to each of these stages to

facilitate where your reports and dashboards will be housed during
each stage.
 6. Select Assign a workspace to begin.

7. You will be directed to the Assign the workspace to a deployment

stage window, where you can add the Tailwind Traders workspace
to the Development environment.

Only workspaces that are assigned to a Premium capacity will appear.

Additionally, you can only assign a single workspace to each pipeline. Power
BI will auto generate the two other workspaces that are used in the pipeline.

8. If you already have Development, Test, and Production workspaces,

choose one that you want to work with and then select Assign.

If this step is successful, you should see the resulting view.

The preceding image shows how many datasets, reports, and dashboards
that you have in the current Development environment. At every stage,
you have the option to publish the associated workspace as an app by
selecting Publish app.

9. To view all objects that constitute the workspace, select Show more.

Testing stage

After you have collaborated with the teams and built a testing-ready report,
you are ready to proceed to the testing phase. Select Deploy to test, which
will create a new workspace. This workspace, by default, has the same name
as the initial workspace but includes the [Test] suffix. You can change the
name by entering the workspace's settings within the deployment pipeline
interface.

Testing should emulate conditions that objects will experience after they've
been deployed for users. Therefore, Power BI allows you to change the
source of data that is used during testing. To accomplish this task, you will
first need to enter the environment's deployment settings by selecting the
lightning icon, as shown in the following screenshot.
In the resulting Settings window, select the correct dataset. In this example,
you want the OrdersFigures dataset to be used for testing but with a
different data source. To accomplish this task, create parameters in Power
Query Parameters (which will be discussed in a later module) or add a new
rule, which is the process that is used for this example. Under the Data
source rules drop-down menu, select + Add rule.

On the Data source rules section, you can change the data source (which
was used in development) to a new source, which is used for testing the
reports (orders.csv in the following example). When you are finished,
select Save at the bottom of the card.

Production stage

Now, you are close to completing the pipeline, transitioning from

development to testing, and finally to production. At this stage, you need to
create a data source rule for the OrdersFigures dataset in the workspace to
ensure that you are using production data. In this instance, you will be
changing your source from the test to the production folder version of the
orders.csv file, as shown in the following screenshot.
After performing a dataset refresh, your production workspace will be ready.
You can package the workspace as an app, which is available for users.
Currently, your deployment pipeline will appear as shown in the following
figure.
You have successfully created a deployment pipeline from the development
to the testing phase. The following section describes additional operations
that you can conduct in the development pipeline.

Additional operations in the development pipeline

You have created a deployment pipeline and have begun collaborating with
other report developers. You receive notification that one of the other
developers has modified a report. To see the changes to this report, select
the Compare button, as shown in the following screenshot.

Selecting Compare reveals that the OrdersFigures report differs between

the Development and Test environments.
The difference is typically registered as added or removed objects. If you
decide that the changes shouldn't be deployed to the next phase, you can
choose to ignore the changes. For instance, the other developer has added a
report called AdditionalOrderInfo in the Development environment, but
you don't want to deploy these changes. By selecting a specific report and
then selecting Deploy to test, you can effectively choose which reports that
you want to move from environment to environment, as shown in the
following figure.

As the following message indicates, only one change will be carried over.
Exercise caution with this tool. Reports are dependent on their datasets. If a
dataset has changed, but you don't deploy it with an associated report, the
report will not behave correctly.

We recommend that you use deployment pipelines in Power BI service. This

tool ensures that the development life cycle is streamlined and that you can
create one centralized location to collaborate, keep track of, and deploy your
reports.

For more information, see Deployment Pipelines Best Practices.

Troubleshoot data by viewing its

lineage
Completed100 XP

 6 minutes

The Lineage view feature in Power BI allows you to quickly refresh datasets
and see the relationships between the artifacts in a workspace and their
external dependencies.

Consider this module's continuing scenario with Tailwind Traders as an

example. Thus far, you've developed several reports and have published
them to the Tailwind workspace. However, because you are also
collaborating with the Products team, it has become increasingly difficult to
track which reports need to be refreshed and which datasets are in which
report. Consequently, you want the ability to determine which datasets need
to be refreshed because you've been receiving reports of stale data. The
path of data from its source to the destination can often be a considerable
challenge, more so if you have multiple datasets.

The Lineage view feature can help you accomplish this task efficiently and
almost effortlessly.
Data lineage

Data lineage refers to the path that data takes from the data source to the
destination.

The Lineage view feature in Power BI is crucial because it:

 Simplifies the troubleshooting process because you can see the path
that the data takes from source to destination and determine pain
points and bottlenecks.

 Allows you to manage your workspaces and observe the impact of a

single change in one dataset to reports and dashboards.

 Saves time by simplifying your task of identifying reports and

dashboards that haven't been refreshed.

Use the Lineage view

The Lineage view is only accessible to Admin, Contributor,

and Member roles. Additionally, it requires a Power BI Pro license and is only
available for app workspaces. To access the Lineage view, go to the
workspace, and then select Lineage from the View drop-down menu on the
top ribbon.

When the view canvas opens, you can begin to explore this view. The
following example shown an excerpt of the data lineage for the Tailwind
Sales workspace.
This view shows all the artifacts in your workspace. Artifacts include data
sources, datasets and dataflows, reports, and dashboards. Each card
represents an artifact, and the arrows in between these cards represent the
flow of data or the relationship between different artifacts. By following the
arrows from left to right, you can observe the flow of data from the source to
the destination, which will often be a dashboard. Typically, the flow would
be data sources > datasets/dataflows > reports > dashboards.

Data sources

Each of the following cards is a data source that is used in your workspace.
The card tells you the type of data source (for example, Text/CSV) and
the Gateway, which tells you the source of your data. If you are connected
to the data through an on-premises data gateway, this card will tell you more
information about the gateway. Additionally, if you double-click the card, you
will get more details about the data source, such as the file path and the
connection status.
Selecting the lower-right icon on the card will highlight the path from the
data source to the destination, as shown in the following screenshot, which
clarifies the exact path that the data takes.

Next are the datasets/dataflows, which are marked in blue.

Datasets/dataflows

Often, datasets and dataflows can connect to external data sources, such as
SQL Server, or to external datasets in other workspaces. The following
examples show dataset and dataflow cards on the Lineage view.
The Lineage view uses arrows to connect objects, such as datasets, with
their data sources. On these cards, you can see when the dataset was last
refreshed, and you can refresh the dataset by selecting the arrow icon on the
lower-left corner of the card, as shown in the following screenshot.
This component is a powerful troubleshooting feature that helps ensure that
your dataset refreshes are quick and uncomplicated.

Returning to the initial quandary with Tailwind Traders, you wanted to

determine if the company had stale datasets and then quickly refresh the
data. By using the Lineage view feature, you can go through the different
datasets in one view and then use the Refresh data button to refresh
datasets that you determine as stale.

Additionally, if a dataset or dataflow belongs to a different workspace (in this

case, the Tailwind workspace), it will be indicated on the card, as shown in
the following screenshot.

By double-clicking on any card, you can view the metadata, such as the
sensitivity, by whom it was configured, the last refresh date, and the names
and count of tables within this dataset, as shown in the following figure.
You can also view the impact of this dataset across workspaces. By selecting
the overlapping window icon on the lower-right corner of a dataset card, you
can determine the impact analysis of the dataset.

On the Impact analysis window, you can see how many workspaces,
reports, and dashboards that this dataset is a part of and how many views
that this dataset has gathered, as shown in the following screenshot.
The bottom of the Impact Analysis window includes more detail about
which specific reports and dashboards that this dataset is part of.
Additionally, you can select Notify contacts, which allows you to notify
dataset owners (or any other user) of changes in the dataset. Impact
analysis is useful because it allows you to pinpoint datasets that aren't being
used or looked at.

Reports and dashboards

The reports and dashboards cards have similar functionality as the data
source and dataset cards.

Selecting a card will bring up a window in which you can view the metadata
about the report or dashboard. In this window, you can also go directly to the
report or dashboard. You can also enable or disable whether you want to
include this report or dashboard within the app.

This card also contains useful options under the ellipsis (...), as shown in the
following figure. From this menu, you can select to analyze the report in
Microsoft Excel, delete a report, create Quick Insights, save a copy to a
workspace, and more.
Now that you have had an in-depth look into the Lineage view in Power BI,
you can commence with cleaning up the Tailwind Traders workspace. For
more information, see Data Lineage.

Configure data protection

Completed100 XP

 2 minutes

As enterprises grow, so does their data. Often, strict requirements and

regulations must be applied to ensure that this sensitive data is secure.
Power BI provides a few different ways to help you accomplish this task:

 Use Microsoft sensitivity labels to label dashboards, reports, datasets,

and dataflows by using the same taxonomy that is used to classify and
protect files in Microsoft 365.

 Add more protection measures such as encryption and watermarks

when you are exporting the data.

 Use Microsoft Cloud App Security to monitor and investigate activities in

Power BI.
To continue with the module scenario, as more reports and dashboards are
increasingly added to the Tailwind Traders workspace, the Sales team
becomes concerned as they realize the urgency of securing their data. The
team is concerned about the possibility of new users exporting data without
permission. The Sales team doesn't want to roll back reports or dashboards,
so they have asked you to implement comprehensive security measures that
protect data access within and outside of Power BI. You can complete this
task by configuring data protection labels in Power BI.

Before you begin, ensure that you have the appropriate licensing, as
shown here.

Sensitivity labels

Sensitivity labels specify which data can be exported. These labels are
configured externally to Power BI, and Power BI allows you to quickly use
them in your reports and dashboards. These labels allow you to define and
protect content, even outside of Power BI. Datasets, dataflows, reports, and
dashboards can use this mechanism, and all users in your corporation can
use this feature unless exceptions have been defined.

After you have verified your ability to add labels, go to any workspace and
choose an object to secure. For this example, you will add a sensitivity label
to Sales Data by going to the workspace and, under the ellipsis (...),
selecting Settings.

This selection will take you to a window, where you can assign a sensitivity
label to your data. For this example, the following labels have been
externally configured, so you can now apply them to the
data: None, Personal, General, Confidential, and Highly confidential.
You can also go to Microsoft 365 Security Center to define your own labels.
For example, if you want to assign a Confidential label to your Sales
Data report, when you change this label on the Settings pane, it will appear
as a label on the report, as shown in the following figure.

This factor is crucial when you are exporting data. Data that is exported to
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and PDF files will have sensitivity
labels enforced. For instance, if you wanted to export data from Sales
Data into an Excel file, if you are an authorized user, you will see the
following Excel view when you export into Excel.
However, if you didn't have established permissions, you would be denied
access to see the data. This verification ensures that only appropriate users
have access to view the data, which helps make sure that your data is
secured.

For more information, see Apply Data Sensitivity Labels in Power BI.