Something is wrong in Power BI! A checklist.

25 Sep, 2024

It's Monday morning. You open Teams and an your emails.

Something is wrong in Power BI. Somebody sees a number that they know is wrong. What could have gone wrong?

Sometimes the answer is obvious, but sometimes it's not.

What to do? I like to go from the front to the back, in that order. Power BI reports are naturally made of a chain of stages that the data is passed through, and you have to identify which stage is at fault. If the fault is not identified, keep going down the list.

1. Replicate the fault on the front end
   1. Check the page on the published app
   2. Check the report in the workspace. Did the report not get pushed through to the app?
   3. If necessary, if there is row-level security applied, impersonate them
   4. Ask them to reset filters
2. Check the workspace. Did the semantic data model refresh?
3. Check the .pbix/.pbip file.
   1. Check the report page and try to replicate the fault
   2. Check the data table view. Export to Excel and analyse if necessary
4. Check the Power Query preview, before ETL steps are applied
5. Check the source data