Bugless deployments, instant rollbacks, on-demand data quality checks. Sounds like a dream come true for any dashboard creator. In the late 1990s concepts of a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) came to the surface, but only in the 2010s developers started to create these processes for engineers on a large scale. 

Finally, Power BI developers can take advantage of all the benefits from proper programming platforms for their dashboard projects in Power BI. With the use of Azure DevOps developers can focus on the code and the system tests and deploys. 

The integration between Microsoft Fabric, Git, and Azure DevOps has been available since 2024 and has become the latest and most complete solution for building the pipelines in Power BI. The reason why it is a hot topic is due to the fact that standard CI/CD tools require too much custom work for Power BI’s unique environment - using tools such as Jenkins, Github or Gitlab would require many custom scripts.

With the creation of the Power BI pipelines, Microsoft has published an “easy-to-use” manual for those wanting to play around with it. A user can create a local Git repo using VS Code, where changes made in Power BI Desktop will be tracked for version control. By connecting the local Git repo to Azure DevOps, multiple developers can simultaneously work on the same Power BI project and Azure Pipelines can be used to automate the CI/CD pipelines. However, for more experienced developers, Fabric API solutions is a great example to build new, or integrate to existing, deployment pipelines in Azure DevOps. This approach leverages the Fabric Git APIs and the Fabric REST APIs to manage and deploy Power BI assets between workspaces, giving developers more control and flexibility to integrate with their existing DevOps workflows.

Why should you use the CI/CD pipelines in Power BI?

• Automated checks and alerts, the pipelines will automatically test changes in DAX calculations, data models and report functionality. This will eliminate manual errors
  
• Consistency, due to the automatic deployment of validated alterations, development, testing and production environments are identical.
  
• The pipeline automates tests regarding code, data quality, membership and environment setup. It ensures that the code is automatically tested, sent to production and deployed to multiple environments in one go, causing the deployment speed to ramp up.
  The developers can focus on writing features and less on deployment checks.
  
• Version control, each adjustment in your reports and dashboards is logged and saved in audit trails, which gives the user the ability to roll back to previous versions.
  
• Power BI's CI/CD capabilities go beyond simple content deployment. They enable you to manage your workspace setup in code, including security settings, user permissions, and intricate data refresh schedules to refresh tables instead of the whole semantic model.
  
• Developers can collaborate on the same Power BI project at the same time. Coding conflict errors are not completely eradicated, nonetheless, they are easier and faster to resolve.
  
• There are many other benefits of CI/CD pipelines: data source management, scheduled deployments, gateway configuration, report dependencies, quality assurance, disaster recovery and business continuity.

Implementing CI/CD in Power BI is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The biggest roadblock is not a technical one; it's the trap of over-engineering and trying to implement a system that's more complex than your team's needs.

Keep it as simple as possible: don't start with a full-blown DevOps pipeline if you're just looking to solve version control. The goal is not to have a complex pipeline, but to enable smoother, more reliable development.

• Small teams concerned with version control and collaboration
  Use a file-based version control, where one uses a local Git repo and VS Code
• Mid-sized teams who want to move content to production in a structured manner
  Use the built-in Power BI Deployment Pipelines, which is an out-of-the-box solution the the Power BI Service

Large, enterprise teams that want to automate multiple tasks beyond deployment
Integrate with Azure DevOps and APIs for a more robust, programmatic approach

Implementing a CI/CD pipeline in Power BI is not solely a technical best practice for developers working on the project, it helps your users by faster delivery of high quality reports with reduced IT overhead and increased business confidence in your Power BI solutions.

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