Automate Your Power BI Reports Deployment Using Azure DevOps

These instructions will show you how to install the Power BI Action extension that we are going to use for this tutorial,

• Sign in to your Azure DevOps organization.
• Go to Organization Settings.
• Select Extensions.
• Click on Browse Marketplace at the top right.
  
  

As the Marketplace opens, search for Power BI Actions and click on the respective result.

Click on the Get it Free button.

Select your target organization from the dropdown and click on Install to complete the procedure.

Create a new service connection

• Go to Project Settings.
• Select Service connections.
• Click the New service connection button and select Power BI Service Connection.
• Fill in the parameters for the service connection and allow all pipelines to use this connection option.
• Click OK to create the connection.
  
  

Creating the Build Pipeline

It is time to create your build pipeline.

• From the dashboard, select Pipelines.
• Click the New pipeline button.
• Select Azure Git Repos as a source that will trigger our pipeline.
• Azure DevOps will suggest several templates, select the Starter Pipeline, to begin with a bare bone pipeline.
• Add the following YAML snippet to your pipeline.

  trigger:
  - masterpool:
    vmImage: 'windows-latest'steps:
  - task: CopyFiles@2
    inputs:
      SourceFolder: '$(Build.SourcesDirectory)'
      Contents: '**.pbix'
      TargetFolder: '$(Agent.TempDirectory)/$(Build.BuildId)'
  - task: ArchiveFiles@2
    inputs:
      rootFolderOrFile: '$(Agent.TempDirectory)/$(Build.BuildId)'
      includeRootFolder: false
      archiveType: 'zip'
      archiveFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/$(Build.BuildId).zip'
      replaceExistingArchive: true
  - task: PublishBuildArtifacts@1
    inputs:
      PathtoPublish: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
      ArtifactName: 'PowerBIArtifact'
      publishLocation: 'Container'

Create a Release pipeline

To automatically deploy your report on Power BI, create a new release pipeline.

• From the dashboard, select Pipelines and then Releases.
• Click the New pipeline button.
• Select Empty Job.
  
  

Add the Extract Files task and configure it as follows.

Finally, add a Power BI Action task, select Upload Power BI Report as Action, enter the target workspace, and add the Source file (path where there will be your report)

You need to specify the deployable component that will be built through the build pipeline and then released by the release pipeline.

• Click Add an Artifact.
• Select Build as Source type.
• In the Source dropdown, select the Training repository.
• Click Add to save.

To finalize your release pipeline, instruct the pipeline to automatically create a new release every time a build is available. Apply this feature by enabling the Continuous deployment trigger.

It is now time to push your local code to your repository and start the pipelines.

References

• Power BI Actions extension