powerbi-report-authoring

Power BI Report (PBIR) Skill

This skill provides guidance on how to develop Power BI reports using the PBIR (Power BI Report) JSON file format.

Critical

• Schema‑aware: validate JSON against the declared $schema; call out violations and propose fixes.
• Understand the PBIP file structure.

Relationship to Other Skills

• powerbi-semantic-model: Use for semantic model development (tables, measures, DAX). This skill handles report layout, visuals, and pages only.
• fabric-cli: Use for workspace operations, deploying, and exporting report definitions.

Pre-development: Understand the Report

Before making any changes to an existing report, always gather context first:

1. Verify PBIR format — Confirm the report has a definition/ folder with report.json, pages/, and version.json.
2. List all pages — Read pages/pages.json to understand the page structure and order.
3. List visuals per page — For each page, list the visual folders and read each visual.json to understand visual types, positions, and field mappings.
4. Identify the semantic model — Read definition.pbir to understand which semantic model the report is connected to (byPath or byConnection).
5. Check theme and resources — Review StaticResources/RegisteredResources/ for custom themes and images.

PBIR file format

Example of a report folder using PBIR format:

Report/
├── StaticResources/ # stores report resources such as images, custom themes,... 
│   ├── RegisteredResources/
│   │   ├── logo.jpg
│   │   ├── CustomTheme4437032645752863.json
├── definition/ # stores the entire report definition: pages, visuals, bookmarks
│   ├── bookmarks/
│   │   ├── Bookmark7c19b7211ada7de10c30.bookmark.json
│   │   ├── bookmarks.json
│   ├── pages/
│   │   ├── 61481e08c8c340011ce0/
│   │   │   ├── visuals/
│   │   │   │   ├── 3852e5607b224b8ebd1a/
│   │   │   │   │   ├── visual.json
│   │   │   │   │   ├── mobile.json
│   │   │   │   ├── 7df3763f63115a096029/
│   │   │   │   │   ├── visual.json
│   │   │   ├── page.json
│   │   ├── pages.json
│   ├── version.json
│   ├── report.json
├── semanticModelDiagramLayout.json # Copy of the semantic model diagram layout the report is connected to.
└── definition.pbir # Overall definition of the report and core settings. Also holds the reference to the semantic model of the report, it's possible to rebind the report to a different semantic model by updating this file.

Name property

All report objects have a name property. For example see the visual.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/fabric/item/report/definition/visualContainer/2.1.0/schema.json",
  "name": "5868707ac858bcbe007a",
  "position": {
    "x": 32.118081180811807,
    "y": 216.32472324723247,
    "z": 4000,
    "height": 492.16236162361622,
    "width": 366.52398523985238,
    "tabOrder": 2000
  },
  "visual": {
    "visualType": "barChart",
    "drillFilterOtherVisuals": true
  }
}

By default PBIR folder uses the internal name property of pages, visuals and bookmarks in the files or folders. For example consider the following path of a visual:

Sales.Report\definition\pages\89a9619c7025093ade1c\visuals\5acb1caf298449a8acb4\visual.json

89a9619c7025093ade1c is the name of the page and 5acb1caf298449a8acb4 the name of the visual.

Task: Create new report on top of semantic model

1. Understand the semantic model — Before creating any report, ensure you have a good understanding of the semantic model: its tables, key measures, dimensions, and date/calendar table.
2. Create or reuse PBIP folder — Create a new PBIP report folder structure or reuse an existing one. Follow the PBIP structure.
3. Copy template files — Copy assets/templateReport/report/definition and assets/templateReport/report/StaticResources to the *.Report folder.
4. Configure the semantic model reference — Update definition.pbir to point to the target semantic model (use byPath for local, byConnection for workspace).
5. Adapt visuals to the semantic model — Load template-report-kb.md and follow its instructions to map each visual to the semantic model fields (title, topCard, dateSlicer, barChart, timeSeries).
6. Validate — Run the Post-development validation steps.

Task: Edit an existing report

Use this workflow when the user wants to add/modify/remove visuals, pages, or bookmarks in an existing report.

1. Locate the report — Determine source (PBIP folder or export from workspace) and access the PBIR files.
2. Run Pre-development discovery — Follow the Pre-development steps to understand the current report structure.
3. Plan changes — Based on the user request, identify which files need to be created, edited, or removed.
4. Execute changes — Apply modifications:
   • If adding visuals: create a new folder under the page's visuals/ directory with a visual.json file. Use the correct $schema and set appropriate position, visual.visualType, and field mappings.
   • If editing visuals: modify the visual.json — update field mappings, position, or visual type.
   • If adding pages: create a new page folder under pages/, add a page.json, and update pages/pages.json with the new page entry.
   • If removing objects: delete the folder/file and update parent index files (e.g., pages.json, bookmarks.json).
5. Validate — Run the Post-development validation steps.

Task: Align Power BI Report visuals

1. Verify PBIR format — Confirm there is a definition/ folder with the report pages.
2. For each page, perform the following:
   1. Inspect all visual.json files — Read the position property of each visual (x, y, height, width, z, tabOrder) and take into consideration the page dimensions (default 1280x720) in page.json to understand the current layout and identify misalignments or overlaps.
   2. Build a wireframe — Map out each visual's X/Y position and dimensions to understand the current layout.
   3. Infer the layout grid — Identify rows and columns in the current arrangement. Group visuals into rows and columns based on similar y (for rows) and x (for columns) values.
   4. Apply consistent alignment:
      • Ensure horizontal and vertical distribution is even across rows and columns.
      • If a row has only one visual, expand its width to fill the row.
      • When possible, make all visuals in the same row have the same height and width.
   5. Update position values — Edit each visual.json with the corrected position properties.

Task: Rename folders to improve readability

1. Identify target objects — The internal name property is used by default in folder and file names. You can rename folders for: pages, visuals, and bookmarks.
2. Rename the folder — Change the folder name to a human-readable name (e.g., mainPage, salesBarChart, dateFilter).
3. Verify references — Ensure no other files reference the old folder name (internal name property in JSON files remains unchanged — only the folder name changes).

Task: Export a report from Workspace

1. Create folder structure — Set up the PBIP folder structure following the PBIP guidelines.
2. Export using Fabric CLI — Use the fabric-cli skill to export the report code definition from the workspace.
3. Place files correctly — Ensure the exported definition goes into the [Name].Report/definition/ local folder.
4. Verify — Confirm the exported folder contains report.json, version.json, and pages/ with at least one page.

Task: Import/Deploy a report to a Workspace

1. Update definition.pbir — CRITICAL: When deploying a report to a workspace, the definition.pbir must use a byConnection configuration targeting a workspace semantic model:

   {  
     "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/fabric/item/report/definitionProperties/2.0.0/schema.json",
     "version": "4.0",
     "datasetReference": {
       "byConnection": {      
         "connectionString": "semanticmodelid=[SemanticModelId]"
       }
     }
   }
   

2. Deploy using Fabric CLI — Use the fabric-cli skill to deploy. You can deploy with a new name if needed.

3. Verify deployment — Confirm the report appears in the target workspace and opens correctly.

Task: Rebind Power BI Report to a different semantic model

Target is a local PBIP folder

1. Edit definition.pbir — Configure a byPath property using a relative reference to the semantic model folder:

   {
     "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/fabric/item/report/definitionProperties/2.0.0/schema.json",
     "version": "4.0",
     "datasetReference": {
       "byPath": {
         "path": "../Sales.SemanticModel"
       }
     }
   }
   

2. Verify field references — After rebinding, check that visual field mappings (Entity and Property references in visual.json files) are still valid against the new semantic model.

Target is in a Fabric workspace

1. Find the semantic model ID — Use Fabric CLI or workspace API to locate the target semantic model ID.

2. Edit definition.pbir — Configure a byConnection property targeting the semantic model ID:

   {  
     "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/fabric/item/report/definitionProperties/2.0.0/schema.json",
     "version": "4.0",
     "datasetReference": {
       "byConnection": {      
         "connectionString": "semanticmodelid=[SemanticModelId]"
       }
     }
   }
   

3. Verify field references — Ensure visual field mappings are compatible with the new semantic model.

Post-development: Validate Changes

After any report modification, always verify your work:

1. Validate file structure - Ensure all required files and folders are present and correctly named. (See PBIR file format).
2. Validate JSON schemas — Ensure all edited JSON files are valid against their declared $schema URL.
3. Check visual field mappings — Verify that Entity (table name) and Property (column/measure name) references in visual.json files match the connected semantic model.
4. Verify page index — Confirm pages/pages.json lists all page folders and the order is correct.
5. Check visual positions — Ensure no overlapping visuals and that positions make sense within the page dimensions.
6. Validate definition.pbir — Confirm the semantic model reference (byPath or byConnection) is correctly configured.

Task: Analyze report against best practices

Run the script scripts/bpa.ps1 against the report definition. If no specific BPA rules are mentioned, use the default set of rules in scripts/bpa-rules-report.json.

1. Run BPA — Execute the Best Practice Analysis script:

   scripts/bpa.ps1 -reports [path to the report definition folder] -rulesFilePath [path to the BPA rules json file]
   

2. Report findings — Categorize results by severity levels (Critical, High, Medium, Info) and propose fixes.

Error Handling

• Invalid JSON schema: Read the $schema URL, validate the file structure against it, and fix any missing or extra properties.
• Broken field references: If a visual references a table or column that doesn't exist in the semantic model, update the Entity and Property values to match valid semantic model objects.
• Deployment failure: Verify that definition.pbir uses byConnection (not byPath) when deploying to a workspace. Check that the semantic model ID is correct.
• Missing pages or visuals after export: Verify the export completed fully. Re-export if the pages/ folder is missing subfolders.
• Template adaptation issues: If the template report visuals don't render correctly, verify that field mappings use exact table and measure names from the semantic model (case-sensitive).

References

External references (request markdown when possible):

• PBIR docs