Get a new Perspective on your Power BI Dataset
What is a Perspective?
A perspective is a view of the model. It allows you to maintain your Shared Dataset (often called a Golden Dataset from this blog post) while presenting a smaller view to the consumers so they are not overwhelmed with tables, columns, and measures they don’t need.
What a Perspective is not
It is not a security model. You will still need to maintain Row-Level Security in your model/dataset.
Why Perspectives
Shared datasets have many benefits, including one version of the model to reduce maintenance, accessible by reports across multiple workspaces, and reduced number of datasets to refresh. However, on the reporting side, the model can become much larger than a single department’s needs. Perspectives, released as a Preview Feature in August 2020, solves this by creating a view of the model appropriate for each group of consumers. This will save time when creating or personalizing reports.
If you publish a report with data not in the Perspective, users can still view it. Remember, it is not a security model. However, if they try to add columns from a table not in their Perspective, it will not be visible in the selection list.
Prerequisites
- Personalize Visuals must be enabled. (A Preview Feature as of August 2020)
- Preview Feature (as of August 2020) Store Datasets using enhanced metadata format must be enabled. See the Limitation section below.
- You must also enable it under the Current File setting. Under Options, Current File, Report Settings, personalize visuals (preview) must be checked.
- Tabular Editor must be installed. Accessed through External Tools menu after installation. Tabular Editor Download here. Several restarts of Power BI may be needed.
- Personalize Visuals must be turned on for the report in the Power BI Service. From the workspace, click on ellipsis, Settings, and ensure Personalize visuals is enabled.
Limitations
If you are using parameters for your connections, the desktop file (pbix) will not be upgraded to the enhanced metadata format. Hopefully, this will be available soon. If you decide Perspectives outweigh a few extra steps for IT, continue. If not, keep checking to see if Microsoft adds parameters to the enhanced metadata format.
A few other limitations exist turning on enhanced data metadata. See here for the current list.
Implementation
This example uses Adventure Works DW 2017. I created simple reports from Fact Finance and Fact Internet Sales.
From the External Tools menu, click Tabular Editor. A new window will open with Tabular Editor. On the Perspectives folder, right-click and add new perspective. I am adding Finance and Sales Perspectives.
Set our starting point. Highlight all tables, right click, and select Show in all Perspectives.
Now we will hide FactFinance from the Sales Perspective. Highlight FactFinance, right click, and select Hide in Perspectives and choose Sales.
Save the edits in Tabular Editor. This will push the changes back to Power BI Desktop. If you try to close Tabular Editor, you will get a warning message.
Back in Power BI Desktop, click on the canvas outside of any report. Then click on format (paint roller). Under the Report-reader perspective, we will choose Sales.
When Sales is selected, click Apply to all pages. If you add a new report, you will have to repeat this.
Save and publish your report.
When we open the report in the Service, we can still see the Finance data on the Finance Tab. A Perspective is not Row-Level Security. It only creates a view over the model.
Now we get to see Perspectives in action.
When a consumer clicks on the Personalize View icon, they won’t be able to see FactFinance.
We search for “fact,” FactFinance is not in the list. But we still see any columns on the base report.
Conclusion
For an enterprise-level reporting, you may have a bunch of Fact tables and dozens of Dimensions. Only a percentage may apply to each department. Now you can have the benefit of maintaining one or a few shared datasets and still limiting the view to individual departments.
Originally published at https://robertjblackburn.com on August 24, 2020.
