Publishing reports in Power BI - Practice Problems & Coding Challenges

Challenge - 5 Problems

🧠 Conceptual

intermediate

Understanding Power BI Report Publishing Options

Which of the following is NOT a valid destination for publishing a Power BI report directly from Power BI Desktop?

A Local Excel Workbook

B Microsoft Teams

C Power BI Report Server

D Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com)

💡 Hint

Think about where Power BI Desktop can publish reports directly without exporting.

Power BI Desktop can publish reports directly to Power BI Service, Power BI Report Server, and Microsoft Teams (via integration). It cannot publish directly to a local Excel workbook.

🎯 Scenario

intermediate

Choosing the Right Workspace for Publishing

You have created a sales report in Power BI Desktop. Your company has multiple workspaces in Power BI Service: 'Marketing', 'Finance', and 'Sales'. You want only the sales team to access this report. Which workspace should you publish to?

A Publish to 'Marketing' workspace

B Publish to 'Finance' workspace

C Publish to 'Sales' workspace

D Publish to 'My Workspace'

💡 Hint

Consider who needs access and workspace purpose.

Publishing to the 'Sales' workspace ensures only the sales team members with access to that workspace can view the report. 'My Workspace' is personal and not ideal for team sharing.

❓ dax_lod_result

advanced

DAX Measure Behavior After Publishing

Consider this DAX measure used in a Power BI report:

Sales Last Year = CALCULATE(SUM(Sales[Amount]), SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR(Calendar[Date]))

After publishing the report to Power BI Service, users report that the measure shows blank values. What is the most likely cause?

A Power BI Service does not support SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR function.

B The Calendar table is not marked as a Date table in the model.

C The measure syntax is invalid and causes errors after publishing.

D The Sales table has no data for last year.

💡 Hint

Think about time intelligence functions and their requirements.

SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR requires the date column to be marked as a Date table in the model. Without this, the measure returns blanks after publishing.

🔧 Formula Fix

advanced

Troubleshooting Report Refresh Failure After Publishing

After publishing a Power BI report connected to an on-premises SQL Server database, the scheduled refresh fails with an error about credentials. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

A The gateway is not installed or configured properly.

B The report uses unsupported visuals.

C The Power BI Service is down.

D The report file is too large.

💡 Hint

Think about how Power BI Service accesses on-premises data.

Power BI Service requires a data gateway to connect securely to on-premises data sources. If the gateway is missing or misconfigured, refresh fails due to credential errors.

❓ visualization

expert

Designing a Dashboard for Published Report Access

You want to create a Power BI dashboard that summarizes key metrics from multiple published reports across different workspaces. Which approach best ensures users see up-to-date data and can navigate to detailed reports?

A Share individual report links via email without a dashboard.

B Export all reports to PDF and combine them into one document.

C Create a new report combining all datasets and publish it to a single workspace.

D Create a new dashboard in Power BI Service and pin visuals from each published report.

💡 Hint

Consider live data updates and user navigation experience.

Pinning visuals from published reports to a dashboard in Power BI Service provides live data updates and easy navigation to detailed reports, making it the best approach.