A customer of mine is in the midst of a proof of concept using SQL Server and Power BI. During the POC, all the modeling was done in Power BI Desktop. Now that the POC is coming to the next phase, the customer is ready to move the Power BI data model to Analysis Services. But the problem is that all the visualizations in the Power BI Desktop file based on the imported data model will need to be recreated in a new Power BI Desktop file using a Live Query connection to Analysis Services. If the visualizations and reports are extensive, this could be quite a bit of work.

In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through modifying a Power BI Desktop file with an imported data model to use an external data model hosted in Azure Analysis Services or SQL Server Analysis Services 2017. This isn’t supported by any stretch of the imagination but if you’re in a pinch and have to convert a Power BI Desktop file from an imported data model to Live Query then this may be helpful to you. Also, this method works as of the January 2018 release of Power BI Desktop but there’s no guarantee that this method will work in future releases of Power BI Desktop. Continue reading Converting a Power BI Desktop File from Import to Live Query →