The default option to rebind a Power BI report is to use the Power BI REST API.

This works well, but for a lot of people this can be quite intimidating.

Fortunately, Gerhard Brueckl, has created the amazing Power BI Studio, which is a Visual Studio Code Extension.

Installing Power BI Studio

You can download it here: Power BI Studio – Visual Studio Marketplace.

Or you can install it directly in Visual Studio Code as shown below when searching for Extensions.

1. Click on Extensions
2. Search for “Power BI Studio”
3. Click on Power BI Studio and install.

Once installed it will appear in the list as shown below.

When you click on the Power BI Studio Icon you will then be prompted to log in.

Log in with your Power BI account you use to log into the Power BI Service.

You will then see all the Workspaces, Pipelines, Capacities and Gateways that you have got access to.

How to Rebind a Power BI Report to a different semantic model

In the steps below I will show you how easy it is to rebind a Power BI report to a different semantic model.

My working example for you to follow along is going to be the following:

• Current state
  • I have a report called “Scanner Report to LH”
  • It is currently connected to the semantic model called “Power BI Scanner – LH”
  • Below is the Item Lineage View.
  • 
• Future State
  • I want to rebind the report “Scanner Report to LH” to a new semantic model called “SM – Power BI Scanner”

Here is an overview of where the reports and semantic models are shown in Power BI Studio.

My understanding is the way that it works, the first step is that you need to open the datasets folder, where you want to rebind the Power BI report to.

As shown above I have expanded the Datasets in the workspace “AC”

Next, I navigate to the report which I want to rebind called “Scanner Report to LH”, I right click and select Rebind.

In Visual Studio Code, you will then see it give you a list of all the datasets that the report can be rebound to.

In my example I searched for “SM” and I then selected “SM – Power BI Scanner”

NOTE: As soon as you click on the semantic model, it will start the rebinding process.

Once completed you will get a notification showing the status as shown below.

I can now go back to the Power BI Service and view the Item Lineage for the report “Scanner Report to LH”

As shown below it has now rebound to the semantic model as shown below.

Rebinding a Report to a Semantic Model in a different workspace

Quite often the report is in a different App Workspace to where the Semantic Model is.

To do this using Power BI Studio, this can easily be done by doing the following steps below.

This time, the first thing I need to do is to go into my App Workspace where I want to rebind the report to.

In this example I want to rebind the report to a Semantic Model called “WWI Sales to PPU”, which is in a workspace called “AAS -> PPU Migration.

I go to this Workspace and expand the datasets to see the datasets as shown below.

Next, I navigate to the report which I want to rebind called “Scanner Report to LH”, I right click and select Rebind.

In Visual Studio Code, you will then see it give you a list of all the datasets that the report can be rebound to.

I can now see a list of all the semantic models and as highlighted below I can see my semantic model called “WWI Sales to PPU”

NOTE: As soon as you click on the semantic model, it will start the rebinding process.

Once completed you will get a notification showing the status as shown below.

I can now go back to the Power BI Service and view the Item Lineage for the report “Scanner Report to LH”

As shown below it has now rebound to the semantic model as shown below.

The good news is that if you do select the wrong Semantic Model, it is quick to repeat the steps above and rebind it to the correct Semantic Model.

Summary

In this blog post I have shown you how to quickly and easily rebind your Power BI report to a different semantic model.

Any question or comments are most welcome.

Thanks for reading 😊