Kategorie: Developer

The Problem

Setting up a Power BI Streaming DataSet in the portal can be a cumbersome task prone to errors due to misspelling and incorrect casing. In a recent customer project, I encountered this challenge and developed a PowerShell script to automate and streamline the process.

The Solution: Automate Power BI DataSet Creation With PowerShell

```ps
param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [string]$newWorkspaceName,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [string]$user,
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
    [SecureString]$password
)

# User credentials for
$credential = New-Object –TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential –ArgumentList $user, $password

# Connect to AAD
$azureProfile = Connect-AzAccount -Credential $credential

# Get an AccessToken to the Power BI service
$accessTokenDetails = Get-AzAccessToken -ResourceUrl 'https://analysis.windows.net/powerbi/api' -DefaultProfile $azureProfile
$headers = @{
    'Authorization' = "Bearer $($accessTokenDetails.Token)"
}

# Create a new workspace
$workspaceName = "Workspace $newWorkspaceName"
$url = "https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/groups?workspaceV2=true"
$body = '{
    "name": "' + $workspaceName + '"
}'
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Method 'Post' -Headers $headers -Uri $url -Body $body -ContentType 'application/json'
if ($null -ne $response.error) {
    Write-Host "Error creating workspace: $($response.error.code) - $($response.error.message)"
    exit
}

$workspaceId = $response.id
Write-Host "Workspace created: $($workspaceId)" 
# Create Internal dataset
$url = "https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/groups/"+ $workspaceId + "/datasets"
$body = '{
    "name": "' + $newWorkspaceName + ' (internal)",
    "defaultMode": "Streaming",
    "tables": [
        {
            "name": "roll",
            "columns": [
                {"name": "timestamp", "dataType": "DateTime" },
                {"name": "field1", "dataType": "String" },
                {"name": "field2", "dataType": "Int64" },
                {"name": "field3", "dataType": "Int64" }
            ]
        }
    ]
}'
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Method 'Post' -Headers $headers -Uri $url -Body $body -ContentType 'application/json'
$internalDataSetId = $response.id
Write-Host "Internal dataset created: $($internalDataSetId)"

## Summarize

You can utilize this code to automate and replicate the creation of Power BI Datasets directly from the command line, eliminating the need for manual intervention.

One common task for cloud engineers is setting up an environment in Azure for solution development. During the development and prototyping phases of an architecture, various manual tasks are performed to test different aspects. However, when it comes to recreating this environment in another resource group, the manual approach becomes impractical. This is where the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) becomes crucial, employing tools such as ARM, Terraform, or Bicep.

Retrieving all the settings from your „click-and-test“ runs isn’t a straightforward process, and there’s a risk of forgetting crucial elements. To streamline this, I often rely on a simple script. This script allows me to extract the entire ARM/Bicep environment from one resource group and apply it to another for testing purposes. Alternatively, I can extract specific settings directly from the file to incorporate them into new Bicep files.

# Resourcegroup 
$resourceGroup = 'myresourcegroup'

# Path to ARM Template
$armTemplatePath = "./armexport.json"

# Path to bicep file
$bicepOutputPath = "./main.bicep"

az group export --name $resourceGroup --output json > $armTemplatePath

# ARM Template in Bicep dekompilieren
az bicep decompile --file $armTemplatePath --force > $bicepOutputPath

az deployment group create --resource-group $resourceGroup --template-file $bicepOutputPath --what-if

If you haven’t installed the Azure CLI (az cli) before, you can do this quite simple with the following command.

Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Force -Scope CurrentUser
Install-AzCLI

This complex code sample is also on GitHub: <https://github.com/oliverscheer/copy-resource-group>

Happy environment cloning.