Power BIte: Turning datasets into dataflows

At this point I’ve said „Power BI dataflows enable reuse“ enough times that I feel like a broken record^[1]. What does this phrase actually mean, and how can you take advantage of dataflows to enable reuse in your Power BI applications?

This Power BIte video is a bit longer than its predecessors, and part of this is because it covers both the problem and the solution.

The problem is that self-service BI applications often start out as one-off efforts, but don’t stay that way. At least in theory, if the problem solved by the application was widespread and well understood, there would be an existing solution already developed and maintained by IT, and business users wouldn’t need to develop their own solutions.

Successful applications have a tendency to grow. For self-service BI, this could mean that more and more functionality gets added to the application, or it could…