Comprehensive Power BI Governance & Backup Solution
Know What’s Used and Where, What Might Break, and Back It All Up — Across Every Power BI Report, Model, and Dataflow
Impact Analysis Designed to Work With:
Any Workspace • Any Computer • Any User
Developed by Chris Cusumano — with inspiration from the Power BI Reddit community, GitHub projects, and open-source collaboration 🚀
2 / 9
The Power BI Journey Starts Simple
One Model. One Report. No Problem.
✅ Easy to maintain
✅ Easy to update
✅ No downstream impact
3 / 9
Best Practices Lead to a Golden Semantic Model
Enter: The Golden Model
✔️ Encouraged by Microsoft best practices
✔️ Shared model for consistency
✔️ Enables self-service analytics
4 / 9
But Then It Gets Complicated…
Small Change, Big Problem
⚠️ Change a measure? → Broken visual.
⚠️ Rename a column? → Bookmarks fail.
⚠️ Delete a table? → Pages crash.
The Reality: One small update to the model or dataflow can silently break dozens of visuals across multiple workspaces. You won't know until users start complaining.
5 / 9
Existing Tools Fall Short
Why Current Solutions Weren't Enough
❌Purview: No visual-level tracking
❌Power BI Service UI: Limited impact visibility
❌Manual checks: Time-consuming & error-prone
❌Existing tools: Don't go deep enough into visual objects
The Gap: No solution provided comprehensive impact analysis down to the individual visual level across all workspaces.
6 / 9
The Solution
Introducing: Power BI Backup & Impact Analysis Solution
✅Complete backups for every report, model, and dataflow
✅Impact analysis down to the visual level
✅Zero prerequisites - fully automated and open source
✅Power BI output - explorable via familiar interface
🚀 Simple Installation (3 Steps)
Create folder: C:\Power BI Backups
Download repo contents to that folder
Run 'Final PS Script' in PowerShell
7 / 9
Comprehensive Feature Set
What This Solution Actually Does
🔍 Visual Impact Analysis
Traces usage of measures, fields, tables down to individual visual objects
📊 Environment Overview
Complete Power BI environment details via REST API
💾 Model Backups
XMLA endpoint + Tabular Editor for PPU/Premium/Fabric
📋 Report Backups
Both Power BI (.pbix) and Paginated (.rdl) reports
🌊 Dataflow Backups
Complete dataflow metadata and query details
🔗 Connection Details
All model & dataflow connection information
📈 Refresh History
Historical refresh data for models and dataflows
🔀 Measure Lineage
View Measure Lineage including all parent and dependent Measures
⚡ No Admin Required
User-level permissions only, portable tools included
