Power BI dataflows to store historical data

Power BI dataflows is a nice capability of Power BI. It’s actually not a new Microsoft product. If you use Excel and Power BI long enough, there is a big chance that you’ve already used Power Query at least once. And basically, to keep things simple, it’s just Power Query, but you have to edit it on a web-browser, in Power BI Service.

Pro license is your entrance ticket to use this nice capability. Although Premium licenses (per capacity or per user) provide more advanced features, many applications of Power BI dataflows are already available with Pro license. One of them is to store historical data, and of course, to show them in reports.

In this blog post, I will briefly introduce Power BI dataflows (with some useful links if you want to learn more). Next, I’ll share how to store historical data in your own storage account and show both current and historical data in a Power BI Report (with ready M scripts, and a pbit file posted on my GitHub repository), so you can roll up your sleeves and start right away with your own use case!

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Difference between Power BI Service and Power BI Report Server

To my surprise, I’ve met many non-tech people and even some from IT who are confused between the two “same same but different” versions of Microsoft Power BI: Power BI Service (cloud version) and Power BI Report Server (on-premise version[1]) .


In this post, I’ll share some tips for non-BI people to identify which version they are using. Then, I’ll provide a holistic comparison of the two versions, hoping to make you more informed of choosing the version that suits your situation best.

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