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Power BI Admin Best Practices

Here are some best practices every Power BI administrator should keep in mind to be successful.

1) Understand and optimize the tenant settings for your organization

One of the important things a Power BI administrator is to understand the tenant settings for your organization. These settings control how Power BI operates within your organization. Fully understanding the tenant settings can you help you implement Power BI Admin best practices. In order to manage these settings, you will need to be setup as a PBI administrator in Office 365.

Here are some tenant settings to consider configuring:
(These are just suggestions that are common across organizations)

Limit or restrict developers from inviting guest users in Power BI

Disable free trial of Power BI pro features for your users

Enable XMLA endpoint (if you are on a Premium Capacity)

Add “Get help” links so users know where they can go to request information or request licenses or access

Enable data sensitivity labels, so information exported from Power BI can be protected

Make sure Publish to Web is disabled

Only allow certified Power BI visuals

2) Gain visibility and monitor your organization’s Power BI platform

Power BI Admin Best Practices — *Develop a system to monitor your Power BI tenant*

One of the first things you will want to do is to design reporting to get visibility into your Power BI environment. To effectively manage your Power BI environment, you will want to be able to monitor and understand what’s going on. Don’t wait for things to happen.

If you have a Premium Capacity, start by downloading the Power BI Premium Capacity Utilization and metrics report. This will allow you to monitor how you’re using a Power BI premium capacity.

You should also create your own reporting so you can answer questions like, “How many reports do we have? What are our usage statistics like across the tenant? Where can we optimize performance?

Some Power BI administrators will use Power Automate to call the Power BI Rest API to export some reporting to a CSV table. Or you can use Powershell to export data to a CSV.

Or you can get an Power BI assessment done by a Microsoft Partner (like Valley BI). As part of the assessment includes reporting that you can keep, that you can automatically update as your tenant grows.

3) Encourage report builders to follow best practices for development

Encourage Power BI developers to follow best practices

One of the important things you can do as a Power BI admin is to encourage report developers to follow best practices. This will make Power BI administration a lot easier.

Here’s a quick list:

Encourage report developers to create and use “shared datasets” that can power multiple reports. This decreases the number of dataset refreshes, increases data governance and improves consistency.
Don’t bring in columns that aren’t needed, use incremental refresh to load large datasets, take advantage of parameters for connections.
Distribute reports using apps (rather than granting direct workspace access)
Use deployment pipelines (for analytics teams)

4) Streamline routine administrative tasks with policies and automation

Eliminate a lot of administrative noise and increase user satisfaction by streamlining administrative tasks. A good place to start is by streamlining user permissions.

We suggest avoid granting people access directly to reports.
Use Active Directory security groups where possible.
Use a standard nomenclature for all groups (e.g. PowerBI-).
If you can, make these groups dynamic (e.g. based off location, title or department).
Create a security group for Power BI users and Power BI developers so you can communicate updates and notifications.

Gateways:

Register and maintain gateways with a service account.
Setup a schedule for updating the version of the on-premise Power BI gateways.
New updates come monthly.
We recommend upgrading the on-premise data gateway version at least once a quarter. Doing so address issues and adds new functionality.
Set up a routine to communicate with developers when the gateways will be updated, test performance after upgrades and do it after business hours.

5) Be laser-focused on security

Power BI can contain a lot of sensitive information that should be guarded. Make sure to understand what content is being shared. Setup appropriate guardrails.

Examples of some Power BI Admin Best Practices for Security:

Limit and protect which data can be exported.
Monitor widely shared reports (e.g. reports shared with the whole organization or outside the organization).
Consider whether users should be able to build on datasets.
Make sure users only have appropriate access to gateway connections.
Develop security policies, and where Power BI developers should save PBIX files.

Feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions in the comments below. We hope these Power BI admin best practices help take your analytics platform to the next level.

If you need help implementing Power BI in your organization, let us know! Check out our Power BI services.

Migrate from Tableau to Power BI – Best Practices

#1 – Don’t “lift and shift” content

When you migrate, don’t try to “lift and shift” existing content to Power BI. During the migration, take the opportunity to clean-up content. Identify reports that aren’t being used or could be consolidated. Rather than trying to duplicate content from Tableau into Power BI, try to build reports leveraging the new capabilities of Power BI. Tableau and Power BI are two different tools. As the saying goes, don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole. Power BI works best when reports and datasets are built to it’s strengths.

Don’t get hung up on how reports currently are, and focus more on what they are trying to accomplish.

Avoid just "lifting and shifting" content from Tableau to Power BI

#2 – Use a star-schema data model

Using the appropriate data modeling technique in Power BI will set you up for success. Power BI thrives when datasets are setup in a star-schema. One common pitfall is to bring all the data as one big table, with every possible column the user could possibly need. Instead, setup your data model to use a star-schema with facts and dimensions to reduce the amount of duplicate data. This will speed up refreshes, especially if you’re publishing and to Power BI online. It also will allow you to build datasets that are geared towards self-service that your users can tap into.

Star Schemas are important especially when you migrate to Power BI

For more information, check out some of our other articles, or take a look at the official Microsoft documentation.
Star Schemas are super important!

#3 – Create shared datasets

Use Power BI’s ability to create “shared datasets” where you can have one dataset that powers multiple reports. Instead of creating multiple reports each with independent queries, take the extra time to create a shared dataset. This will improve data governance. All the numbers across multiple reports will tie. It will reduce the number of refreshes, and make it easier for users to consume data or build their own reports on top of the dataset.

Take advantage of shared datasets in Power BI

#4 – Use apps to distribute content

Rather than sharing reports individually with users, create an app in Power BI to distribute content. Imagine an app as a “bundle of reports”. You can design apps with different audiences, so based on a users-role they see different reports. Apps will make the navigation process easier, and in the long-run will make a more sustainable platform when you migrate from Tableau to Power BI.

#5 – Plan documentation/training from the beginning

For many organizations, documentation and training tend to be an afterthought, usually thrown together at the very end of a migration. However, for a highly-successful migration, focus on creating user-friendly, relevant training and documentation from the beginning. It will increase adoption, satisfaction and hopefully reduce the number of calls your team receives.

Plan training for Power BI from the beginning

#6 – Build user champions

Anytime there’s a new tool introduced, there will be a learning curve. One of the best things an organization can do is to identify users that can be “champions” for Power BI. Give them early access to the tool during the migration. Get their feedback, ask them to play and help become an expert for their department. Recognize them for their efforts, and encourage them to build their own reports. They will be motivated to help others, and increase adoption.

#7 – Create other wins, besides cost-savings

Most organizations use Office 365 and will save money by converting to Power BI. However, cost-savings shouldn’t be the only reason why you convert to Power BI. Let’s be honest, end users aren’t usually too fond of playing musical chairs with enterprise tools. As you plan your power bi migration, find other wins that will benefit end users besides cost savings. During the migration, add some additional functionality to existing reports. Show users how to take advantage of the Power BI mobile app, or show them how they can embed dashboards directly in PowerPoint, where they can interact with the tool and always have the latest data. Consider giving them more self-service capabilities.

Create wins when you migrate from Tableau to Power Bi

#8 – Don’t hesitate to ask for help, register for the user community

It’s okay to ask for help. You might be a Tableau guru, and could teach a class with your eyes closed. However, Power BI is different. Kind of like learning a language, you can’t always literally translate one thing to another. It will take a little getting used to, and perhaps some things will work differently than you’re used to. The Power BI user community is thriving, you can post questions there. (Check out community.powerbi.com). You can always reach out to a Microsoft Partner (like Valley BI) and get assistance.

#9 – Get hands-on training for your analytics team

Establish a solid foundation for your analytics teams with excellent live, in-person training. YouTube is good, but nothing moves the needle like live expert-led training. It will set you up for success and drive results. There are training providers that can fit any budget.

Conclusion

Power BI is a great tool, and there’s a reason why 97% of Fortune 500 companies use Power BI. It brings a lot of power to analytics, however it can become the wild west pretty quickly. Focus on the above tips and best practices, and you’ll be off to a good start.

As a side note, If you’re looking for experts to help you migrate from Tableau to Power BI or even if you’d like to outsource the whole thing, Valley BI is here for you. We are result-driven and laser focused. We will move the needle with any migration project.

Please let us know your thoughts and comments below.