Léon Rethans on 01 May 2018 19:56:19
Power BI should be able to propagate changes in fields (eg. rename of 'customer_name' to 'customer_full_name') in a dataset to all the reports using this dataset in powerbi service.
This functionality is essential if Power BI is to be used as a Self Service BI tool, which allows users to define their own reports based on the dataset.
Currently a change of fieldname will cause existing reports to fail.
possible solutions I can think of :
1. every query item is identified by an internal id, and every report refers to this internal item id (instead of the item name). When the item is renamed all existing reports will automatically use the new name (customer_full_name)
2. every query item has both an item code and an item name. A report refers to the item code, but displays the item name. The item name can be changed without causing existing reports to fail
3. other ......
- Comments (3)
RE: ability to rename a query item (field) in a dataset
This really becomes an issue when testing. I recently had a case where a new table in the dataset was being built to replace one currently used in my Power BI report. The new table had "test" in the name; once testing was finished and the "test" table was moved to live and the name changed, the whole report failed.
I was able to fix the report on the desktop sides using Query Editor, but this fix does not propagate into the Service. All visuals tied to that report were still looking for the table with "test" in its name.
RE: ability to rename a query item (field) in a dataset
This idea is about a Self Service BI environment with thousands of reports using shared datasets in powerbi service. Renaming a field in this shared dataset will cause all dependent reports to fail.
Your workaround won't fix this problem.
RE: ability to rename a query item (field) in a dataset
What happens when you activate the automatic update?
if the field no longer has the same name in power Bi as in Sql server?
I would not update the report?