If you want to properly address report versioning and storing its older copies in Power BI, then you can follow these recommendations:
Use Power BI Service to Publish Reports with Version Control: While PBI Service applies, avoid including multiple copies of the effects of the report within the workspace of the versioning feature. This is particularly important where one prefers to obse…e any of the changes made on a report—and he adds and saves various versions of the report and renames it. For instance, in those cases when it is crucial to keep each revision of the report, one can modify the report's name by adding a date or other numeric code to it in the title (for example, "Sales Report_v1", "Sales Report _v2").
Use Power BI Dataset Snapshot Capabilities: For a time-specific transformation of the data, you can utilize the available "Snapshot" utility by duplicating the datasets based on the time intervals. Similar to the month-end or quarter-end processes, the data for the reports is usually refreshed at intervals in between workings, purposely 'caging' the data. This is useful in preserving the past figures that will be checked at a later date. This includes backing up old snapshots, which may be in excess of the business needs, to a data warehouse, or to Azure Storage.
Use Data Warehousing to Store Complete History of Data: When it comes to historical data backtracking, there is a provision to take snapshots of data and keep them in storage, for instance, a data warehouse (SQL Server, Azure Synapse). Providing appropriate changes to those measures or calculated columns in Power BI whenever current and historical data are available, creates views in order to analyze data over periods of time, consequently creating even more tables known as historical tables. With this technique, data trends are easy to evaluate, and insights comparing two consecutive years can be drawn without burdening Power BI with enormous amounts of data.
Analysis of Data over the Years and Power Query to Change Qualitative Data: Power Query can be used to record any historical variation in your information. For instance, you can design a process where only the changes since the last update are retrieved; thus, new information is added along with the time stamp. This enables storage of information that has been salvaged over the years for future use.
Interactive Reports Utilize Different Versions for Different Audiences: If a certain report has to be viewed in diverse ways by more than one stakeholder, then it is advisable to prepare separate report versions for each audience. The benefit of this is that it helps in understanding what has changed, and everything is fine concerning the differences in the information or illustrations. For instance, these two reports, "Management Report" and "Operational Report," can be produced on the same core data.
Changes Made to Reports Should be Kept in a Log: A detailed history of changes is important, especially in the design of reports, the structures of data, and the content. It is recommended to use a shared space or a control version tool, e.g., Git, to log edits. This enhances accountability while also helping to resolve problems quickly in the event issues arise.
Power BI Deployment Pipelines are Used: When stricter version control across environments (dev, test, live) is required, the deployment pipelines feature of Power BI helps automate report promotion across various stages while keeping track of the version history. It ensures that the report used is always the right version while allowing for easy deployment without any removal of the past context.
These aspects will guide you on how to use Power BI efficiently, from versioning management to achieving objectives without disorganizing the reporting processes.
