Power BI Live Connection

What is Power BI Live Connection?

Power BI Live connection is a method of establishing data connectivity between a Power BI Report and a published Power BI Semantic model. Using live connections, you can create a Power BI report without creating a semantic model in Power BI. Typically, Live connections rely on existing data to connect with a semantic model and enable you to create multiple reports in Power BI using these semantic models.

Live connection in Power BI is a valuable mode of data connectivity for the following reasons:

• There are no additional requirements for data storage.
• There are no requirements for full or incremental data refresh as you are directly connected to the source data.
• Memory requirements are significantly less compared to other data connectivity modes.
• Ability to establish Power BI Live Connection data sources or multiple sources.

How to create a Report with Power BI Live Connection?

To create a Report with live connection, follow the steps highlighted below:

Step 1: Open your Power BI Desktop, connect to data sources, and create a data visualization or report using the Visualization options in the Power BI

Step 2: Publish the created report and semantic model by navigating to the Home tab and selecting the Publish option.

Step 3: Choose the destination where you want to publish your report to the Power BI Service and click on Select.

If you have multiple folders, then use the Search text bar to filter the specific destination.

It will enable you to access the semantic model. You can also configure the build permissions access in the Power BI Service portal.

Step 4: Power BI Desktop will start publishing to Power BI Service.

Step 5: Once the publishing is successful, you will see a success message on your screen with links to the report and a Quick Insights link for your report.

Note: You can endorse your content, i.e., report with a semantic model such as content promotion or certification on the content quality and attestation of reliability. You can also set up build permissions for your published report in the Power BI Service to ensure only authorized users have access to your semantic models.

Step 6:  Establish the line correction to the published semantic model by navigating to the Power BI Desktop, Home – Get data – Power BI semantic models.

Alternatively, you can also access the Power BI semantic models by navigating Home – Get Data – Microsoft Fabric – Power BI semantic models and click on Connect.

Step 7: Select the semantic model from the available list of data in the OneLake data hub, and clicking on Connect. 

Note: You can filter any specific semantic model using a keyword, search for My data, or any endorsed data in your organization using the options in the data hub.

Step 8: Once the live connection is made to the semantic models, you will be able to establish the connection to the dataset and view the underlying data sources in the Data pane for your visualization requirements.

Step 9: Use the semantic model data fields to create a report for your visualization.

Note: You can also establish a live connection in Power BI to the SharePoint list in Power BI Desktop and create a report for your visualization requirements. 

Examples

In this section, we will go through few examples of creating a report using the Power BI Live Connection in Power BI Desktop.

Example #1

In this example, we will go through setting up and using a live Connection using billionaires’ data by country 2024 dataset. Billionaires’ Data by Country 2024 contains data of the world’s top Billionaires from different countries and contains:

• country-populationgrowth-2024: List of countries along with their population details
• billionaires-by-country-2024: List of countries along with the billionaires list details

To set up and use a Live connection in Power BI Desktop, follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Import data into Power BI using Get data and establish the data relationship.

Step 2: Create a data visualization in Report canvas using the data fields.

Step 3: Publish it to Power BI using the Publish option in the Home tab.

Step 4: Select the destination in Power BI Service and click on Select.

It will start publishing to Power BI Service.

On clicking on the link to the published report, you will be navigated to the Power BI Service window to view the published report.

On click of the link to the published report, you will be navigated to Power BI Service window to view the published report.

Step 5: Open a new Power BI Desktop instance. Navigate to Home – Get data – Power BI semantic models.

Step 6: Search for Live, select the semantic model from the data hub list, and click on Connect.

You will view the data fields of the underlying dataset will be visible in the Data pane.

Step 7: Leverage the dataset to create Power BI reports.

Example #2

In this example, we will go through the use case of creating a Financial Sales Dashboard for a retail organization. The Sales team of a retail giant wants to implement a dashboard for monitoring the key metrics and real-time sales performance across different units to take preventive actions to boost performance.

The Sales team can implement the Power BI Live Connection data connectivity mode to establish the data connection with the data storage and create a dynamic sales dashboard to track the performance using the steps highlighted in example 1.

Limitations

The key limitations of using Power BI Live Connection are outlined below:

• To connect a published semantic model using the Power BI Service Live Connection, you need to have build permissions for a semantic model.
• For users with build permissions, to view the hidden columns in a semantic model, you need to create a Power BI Live connection to connect with the semantic models using Power BI Desktop.
• If you have a free user license, then you can only view the datasets available in My Workspace or Premium/Fabric-based workspace.
• Here, you can’t use left navigation or modeling like SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) connection.
• In Power BI Live connection, certain behaviors such as row-level security (RLS) are imposed similarly to SSAS connection.
• Any changes made by the author to the original Power BI reports or dashboards override the semantic model and reports in Power BI Service. However, it doesn’t change any reports based on these semantic models, but any changes to these models are reflected in the reports.
• Users who are part of a Power BI Service workspace and wish to replace the original shared Power BI report will be required to rename the file and publish it as a new file to the Power BI Service.
• Any removal of the semantic model that’s shared using the Power BI Service will result in an error in displaying the reports based on those semantic models, and you will also lose access to those semantic models in the Power BI Desktop.
• Reports created using the shared semantic models in Power BI Service don’t allow the usage of any automated deployments using the Power BI REST API.

Important Things to Note

• Ensure that you have provided build access to the relevant stakeholders to use the Power BI Live Connection.
• Where possible, endorse your content to ensure the quality and reliability of your end reports in your organization.
• Always evaluate the impact of larger datasets on the reporting performance before you use the Live Connection.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Power BI Live Connection. Here we learn how to create report along with examples, limitations, and points to remember. You can learn more from the following articles –

• Power BI Connections
• Power BI Data Lineage
• Power BI Data Catalog