Governance/Administration — Data Goblins Blog

All in Governance/Administration

Oct 17

Oct 17 How to use Tableau with Power BI and Fabric

Kurt Buhler

Getting/Transforming Data, Governance/Administration

In this post, I’ll explain the how and why of:

How to connect Tableau to Power BI semantic models.
How to connect Tableau to Fabric lakehouses (and other items that have a SQL endpoint).

May 24

May 24 Overview of new Microsoft Fabric Power BI Announcements

Kurt Buhler

Data Modelling, Administration, Data Culture & Adoption, Data Visualization, Getting/Transforming Data, Governance/Administration

In this short article, I share a visual overview of the MS Build announcements for Microsoft Fabric that are relevant for Power BI. Hopefully this makes it less overwhelming.

Nov 15

Nov 15 Power BI Analyze-in-Excel Checklist

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this article, we examine considerations for implementing & governing Analyze-in-Excel in your Power BI self-service ecosystem.

Jul 26

Jul 26 Training Power BI End-Users with reporTee

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration, Data Culture & Adoption

Training users is important in every Power BI project. It’s particularly important when implementing Power BI, or if users are not familiar with Power BI reports. However, creating good training material is time-consuming, and difficult. In this article, I introduce reporTee, a licensed, out-of-the-box training tool to get users oriented in Power BI reports.

Jun 21

Jun 21 The Impact Factor of Power BI External Tools

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post, I explain why External Tools are necessary & discuss the challenges in adopting them.

Jun 14

Jun 14 Dimensions of Self-Service in Power BI: Part 1

Kurt Buhler

Data Culture & Adoption, Governance/Administration

In this post, I write about the options for self-service tooling in Power BI. Which tools to use for which cases, by whom & why? I've found it's helpful to visualize the different dimensions of this, to know the options & understand user skill/solution paths.

May 17

May 17 Monitoring Power BI using REST APIs from Python

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post I explain how to call the Power BI REST APIs from Python. You can do this either with a dedicated user or a Service Principal registered from the Azure Portal. I’ll walk through the necessary steps to get this working.

May 9

May 9 Get Power BI Dataset Refresh History using Python

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post I explain how to get dataset refresh history from Power BI using Python. For this method, you need to be a tenant Admin, and it is limited to only 7 days or 60 refreshes, per dataset. For more history, you need another API or method.

May 8

May 8 Get Publish-to-Web & Org. share links from Power BI API with Python

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post I explain how to call the Power BI APIs from Python with a Service Principal to get all the publish-to-web and cross-org share links in your tenant, which pose a big governance risk.

May 7

May 7 Get Workspaces from Power BI API with Python

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post I explain how to call the Power BI APIs from Python with a Service Principal to get all the workspaces managed in your tenant. I share also a github gist for a Python script which retrieves all workspace objects, including users, datasets, reports, etc.

May 6

May 6 Get Deployment Pipelines from Power BI API with Python

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration

In this post I explain how to call the Power BI APIs from Python with a Service Principal to get the deployment pipelines managed in your tenant.

Apr 19

Apr 19 Extracting Power BI Tenant Settings with Power Automate Desktop

Kurt Buhler

Power BI, Governance/Administration

In this post, we look at a simple way to extract the tenant settings from Power BI using Power Automate Desktop and a UI Automation / RPA flow. Inside, we have a summary of the settings and recommendations for each, as of April 2022.

Apr 5

Apr 5 Track Changes in Power BI: Part 5 - Using pbi-tools

Kurt Buhler

Data Visualization, Governance/Administration

In this article, we look at some tips to best use pbi-tools and how to automate pbi-tools execution in the background, using Power Automate Desktop flows.

Mar 29

Mar 29 Track Changes in Power BI: Part 4 -Reports

Kurt Buhler

Data Visualization, Governance/Administration

pbi-tools is a command-line tool that enables Source / Version Control of Power BI (thin) reports and datasets. Much like the folder structure generated by Tabular Editor, pbi-tools creates a Report Layout structure based on files in the .pbix. In these articles, we go into the background of this tool & how to use it.

An important note if you are using Sensitivity Labels - files with Sensitivity Labels are currently not supported with pbi-tools. More info on that at the bottom of the article.

Feb 1

Feb 1 Track Changes in Power BI: Part 3 - Workspace Mode

Kurt Buhler

Data Modelling, Governance/Administration

Using Tabular Editor 3 & Workspace mode, source control is that much easier, even when using Branching!
In this article, I explain how workspace mode in Tabular Editor 3 makes Source Control easy by letting you simultaneously save changes to disk but also to a service dataset for testing. I then explain how this can work when collaborating on a model, for example, using Git Branching in Power BI development.

Feb 1

Feb 1 Track Changes in Power BI: Part 2 - Tutorial

Kurt Buhler

Data Modelling, Governance/Administration

Let’s set up some basic Source Control in Power BI, with Tabular Editor, Azure DevOps/Git & Visual Studio!
In this post, I give a brief step-by-step tutorial on setting up basic Source Control in Power BI, and explain how Tabular Editor helps your source control in Power BI, by leveraging the TE folder structure save format.

Feb 1

Feb 1 Track Changes in Power BI: Part 1 - Introduction

Kurt Buhler

Data Modelling, Governance/Administration

It’s no big secret that source control is challenging in Power BI.
There are few native tools which enable source control in Power BI, allowing you to track changes and work collaboratively with colleagues on a Power BI dataset. Thankfully, however, external tools make this quite easy, for example, leveraging the folder structure save format of Tabular Editor.

This post is a simple introduction to source control as it pertains to a Power BI dataset, and how to set it up.

Mar 2

Mar 2 Automated Regression Monitoring in Power BI

Kurt Buhler

Governance/Administration, Data Visualization

In this article, we examine a method to automatically monitor & test data quality in Power BI by setting up a composite model to detect data changes.