Create and manage workspaces in

Power BI 
 29 min
 Module
 8 Units
 4.8 (3,070)
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Intermediate
Data Analyst
Power BI
Microsoft Power Platform

This module explains how you can share reports and datasets with your users and
how to create a deployment strategy that makes sense for you and your
organization. Furthermore, you will learn about data lineage in Microsoft Power BI.

Learning objectives
In this module, you will:
 Distribute a report or dashboard.
 Monitor usage and performance.
 Recommend a development life cycle strategy.
 Troubleshoot data by viewing its lineage.
 Configure data protection.
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Prerequisites
None

This module is part of these learning paths

 Manage workspaces and datasets in Power BI
 Introduction1 min
 Distribute a report or dashboard7 min
 Monitor usage and performance2 min
 Recommend a development life cycle strategy7 min
 Troubleshoot data by viewing its lineage6 min
 Configure data protection2 min
 Check your knowledge3 min
  Summary1 min

Introduction
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.

Next unit: Distribute a report or dashboard

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 Cannot add or 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.

Next unit: Monitor usage and performance

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.

Next unit: Recommend a development life cycle

strategy

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.

Next unit: Troubleshoot data by viewing its lineage

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.

Next unit: Configure data protection

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.

Next unit: Check your knowledge

Continue

Check your knowledge

200 XP
 3 minutes
Answer the following questions to see what you've
learned.
1. 

How is the Admin workspace role different from other types of workspace roles?

Admin is the only role that can add and remove users.

Admin is the only role that can publish or update apps.

Admin is the only role that can create, edit, or delete content in a workspace.

Admin is the only role that can publish content to a workspace.

2. 

Which one of the following options is the best description of a workspace?

A workspace is a feature in Power BI service that allows you to view reports only.

A workspace is a feature of Power BI Desktop that allows you to build reports only.

A workspace is a centralized location or repository that allows you to collaborate

with colleagues and teams to create collections of reports, dashboards, and so on.

A workspace is a feature that allows you to view and edit the data model, build
visualizations, and transform the data.
3. 

What feature in Power BI service can you use to troubleshoot the flow of data from
its source to its destination?

Usage Metrics report

Query Caching

Quick Insights

Lineage view

Summary
Completed100 XP
 1 minute

A workspace is a crucial feature of Power BI that allows you to share reports, build
dashboards, and collaborate with your teams. Power BI workspaces can help increase
performance in your reports, ensure that appropriate security requirements are
applied, make it easier for you to share content, and more. With this information, you
can add to your toolkit the ability to manage workspaces in Power BI service so that
you can build your dashboards in the most efficient way possible.

For more information, see Organize work in the new workspaces.

Module incomplete: