9.2 Packaging and Publishing Content
9.2.2 Understanding the Content Pack Lifecycle
Let’s go through a few scenarios that will help you understand the lifecycle of a content pack. The lifecycle includes initial publishing, consumer access and changes, as well as changes by the content pack author. In this scenario, Elena is the content pack author, and Maya is the consumer.
Initial publishing and access
The content pack lifecycle starts when the content pack is published and available for access:
1.Elena belongs to the Sales Department workspace via a Power BI group membership.
Martin has informed Elena that the Sales Department has added some BI content that could benefit the finance group and even the entire organization!
2.Elena creates and publishes an Adventure Works Sales content pack that includes some
dashboards, reports, and datasets. When Elena uses the “Create Content Pack” page, she grants access to a group that Maya belongs to.
3.Maya logs in to Power BI and navigates to the Content Gallery. Maya discovers the Adventure Works Sales content pack and connects to it. Now Maya has read-only access to the dashboard and reports that are packaged in the Adventure Works Sales content pack.
Changes by consumers
Consumers can personalize content that’s included in an organizational content pack.
However, consumers never modify the original content. Instead, when they make a change, Power BI creates a personal copy of the content pack. At this point, the content exists in two places: the original content as published by the report author and a personal copy for the consumer. Let’s follow Maya as she makes some changes:
1.Maya analyzes the reports and dashboards in the Adventure Works Sales dashboard.
2.Maya wants to change a dashboard (or a report), such as to add a new dashboard tile. If Maya attempts to add a tile to the dashboard, she won’t be able to do so because the dashboard name will be grayed out. Upon further inspection, Maya sees a padlock icon next to the dashboard name.
3.Maya clicks the icon, and she’s prompted whether or not she wants to get a personal copy of the content pack (see Figure 9.12). If Maya wants to change a report that’s included in the content pack, she’ll get the same prompt when she opens the report in Reading View, and clicks the “Edit report” menu to switch to Editing View.
Figure 9.12 Consumers can personalize dashboards and reports included in a content pack.
4.Maya clicks the Save button. Power BI clones the content of the organizational content pack. Maya looks at the navigation bar and sees another set of reports, dashboards, and datasets with identical names as the ones included in the content pack. Now she can change her copy of the pack content. Her changes never affect other users or the original content.
TIP Personalizing a content pack clones all the content but keeps the same item names. At this point Maya can get confused about which ones are the personalized clones and which are the original versions. She can click an item and learn about its origin by inspecting the menus and icons, but I’d recommend she renames the personalized copies to
make it clear. For example, she can rename the cloned reports to My Adventure Works Dashboard or My Sales Report.
Changes by the content pack publisher
Content packs are likely to undergo changes. For example, as the business evolves, Elena might want to make changes to the content pack reports and dashboards:
1.Elena opens the Adventure Works dashboard (or report) and makes a change. For example, she changes an existing visualization or adds a visualization.
2.Power BI pops up the message shown in Figure 9.13
Figure 9.13 Power BI shows this message when the publisher changes content included in an organizational content pack.
3.Now Elena has to decide if she wants to push the changes to all the consumers. If she wants to do that, she can click the “View Content Packs” button or go to “Power BI Settings” ð “View Content Pack”.
4.This action shows all content the packs she created (see again Figure 9.10). However, this time the Adventure Works Sales content pack has a warning icon next to its name.
When Elena hovers her mouse over the warning icon, a message pops up to let her know that she needs to update the content pack, as shown in Figure 9.14.
Figure 9.14 Power BI informs the content pack publisher about pending changes.
5.Elena updates the content pack.
6.The next time that Maya views the original dashboard or report, she sees Elena’s changes. However, Maya’s personalized content doesn’t change.
Deleting content packs
A content pack reaches the end of its lifecycle when it’s no longer needed, and so it’s removed:
1.The Adventure Works Sales content pack is outdated, and Elena needs to remove it.
When she attempts to delete it, she’s prompted to confirm her intention and warned that anyone who’s connected to the content pack will no longer be able to access it.
2.Elena confirms the prompt, and Power BI removes the content pack.
3.When Maya opens the Power BI portal, she notices that the original reports and datasets are gone. The dashboards are still there but all the original tiles are removed. However, Maya’s personal copy remains unaffected as long as the datasets are still functional.