Power BI workspaces

Power BI workspaces represent the most used metadata in Power BI. It contains for example reports and data sets. If you want a full ingestion, you have to make sure that the lineage harvester can access all metadata in your Power BI workspaces. Consider the following:

  • Depending on the authentication type, you must have specific roles and permissions to access the metadata in the Power BI workspaces.
  • You can only fully ingest new Power BI workspaces. This means that classic workspaces and My Workspace in Power BI are not supported.

Tip Use the Power BI <source ID>_filter configuration file to filter on Power BI workspaces.

Note To ingest Power BI dataflows:
  • You need access to the Power BI environment in which the data flow is stored.
  • The data set in the data flow must exist in a premium workspace.

Filtering Power BI workspaces

Filtering, in this context, means specifying from which Power BI workspaces and/or capacities you want to ingest metadata. Filtering allows you to ingest only the metadata that matters most to you.

You use the filters section in the Power BI <source ID> configuration file to configure workspace filtering. You can filter on workspace names, workspace IDs, capacity names or capacity IDs.

The lineage harvester accesses the metadata of all Power BI workspaces. Filtering then determines which metadata is sent from the Collibra Data Lineage server to Data Catalog. This means that if you don't use filtering, all workspaces are ingested in Collibra.

Tip In the Power BI <source ID> configuration file, you can also specify the domain (or domains) in which you want to ingest, to help structure your Power BI assets in Collibra.

Filtering best practice

You can filter on a capacity to ingest the metadata from all workspaces in that capacity. Let's say, for example, that you have 50,000 workspaces but you only want to ingest metadata from the workspaces related to a specific department in your organization. You could specify each of the relevant workspaces in the configuration file, but that could be tedious if there are lots of workspaces. Furthermore, if someone in your organization creates a new workspace, it will have to be added to your configuration file. Instead, you can filter on a capacity. Then, when a new workspace is created, ensure that it is added to the department' s capacity and metadata from that workspace will be automatically ingested, without having to update the configuration file.

Workspace states

On Power BI Workspace asset pages, you can include the attribute type State, to show the state of ingested Power BI workspaces, for example Active, Orphaned or Deleted. To do so, you have to edit the global assignment of the Power BI Workspace asset type and assign the attribute type State.

For complete information on Power BI workspaces and possible states, see the Microsoft Power BI documentation.

Tip If you only want to see Power BI workspaces that have the state Active:
  1. Ensure that the attribute type State is assigned to the Power BI Workspace asset type via the global assignment.
  2. Go to the Global view, and then create an advance filter and filter by the following clauses:
    1. Asset type equals Power BI Workspace
    2. Characteristic State equals Active.

Deleted workspaces

If you delete a Power BI workspace, the workspace is maintained for a 90-day grace period, during which a Power BI administrator can restore the workspace. During the grace period, the workspace has the state Deleted. When you ingest Power BI metadata in Data Catalog, this deleted workspace is ingested.

When the grace period elapses, the state of the workspace becomes Removing, for a short time, while it is being permanently removed. The state then becomes Not found. At this point, as the workspace no longer exists in Power BI, the Power BI Workspace asset in Collibra will also be deleted upon the next synchronization.

Why are deleted workspaces ingested?

Let's image that you ingest a Power BI workspace with the Active state and that over time, you add comments, tags and characteristics to the asset in Collibra. Now let's imagine that the workspace is deleted in Power BI and we do not ingest the deleted workspace. In this case, the Power BI Workspace asset in Collibra is deleted upon the next synchronization. But what if the Power BI administrator decides, during the 90-day grace period, to restore the workspace in Power BI? Upon the next synchronization, a new Power BI Workspace asset is created in Collibra, but all of the comments, tags and characteristics that were part of the deleted asset are lost.

By ingesting deleted Power BI workspaces, we safeguard against losing any of the additional information on the Power BI Workspace asset, in case a Power BI administrator decides to restore a workspace during the grace period.