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azuressaspowerbiazure-analysis-services

Switch Power BI data sources from Excel to Azure analysis services

Right now I have created power bi dashboard (using power bi desktop) which retrieves data from excel file. Later on I will replicate the same data model to Azure analysis services tabular model.

Is it possible to switch my power bi dashboard's data source to azure analysis service seamlessly?. What I mean is that I don't have to do major rework on my dashboard (re-create the visualization again, etc). How do I do that?

Thank you

Solution

  • According to me the hard fact is that it may not be seamless. There may be possibility of minimizing some extra work though but you need to answer few questions yourself and then decide:-

    1. Do you plan to use SSAS Tabular in Power BI using live connection or import mode? (I assume you are probably having this cube as on-premise)
    2. Is the data layout in the excel (understand it like flattened data) going to be same as in SSAS Tabular?

    One option worth considering would be to have the SSAS Tabular cube readily loaded using the data from the excel and you start off the development of Power BI. That way source changes in Power BI will not be an issue going forward.

    Hope this helps?