It has been in the service for quite a while so I thought I would blog about it in terms of how you can create a power BI semantic model simply using the web interface. This means you no longer need Power BI desktop, or a Windows PC to get going.

This is quite a significant change because at times you need a lot of resources on your Windows PC or you’re working on a Mac and could not do this previously.

So, I will give an overview below on how you can create the semantic model just by using your browser.

Getting data into your Semantic Model

  • Click on New Item, then click on Semantic Model
  • The trick is to click on Get Data (And this will bring up the Power Query interface.)
  • In my example I am going to query an existing table I have in my Lakehouse (But as you can see below, you have all the sources that you have in Power Query.)
  • But then prompts me where I want to create the new Semantic model which I will save.
    • And then click on Create.
  • This will then create the semantic model and create an untitled report. But I would show you in the subsequent steps how to edit the semantic model if you wanted to add more data or create measures and relationships in the semantic model.
  • I closed the untitled report and clicked on my workspace, Where could I then my semantic model.
  • I then clicked on the three dots next to my semantic model and clicked on Open Semantic Model.
  • By default, this opens in the viewing mode, which you can see on the top right-hand side.
  • I clicked on the drop down and changed it to editing mode.
  • I can now click on the transform data if I wanted to add more data to my semantic model, and as you can see this brings up the familiar Power Query interface.
  • I then added. A manual data table just to show you how we can use Power Query Online.
  • I could then see my two tables and clicked on save.
  • This then processed the queries and validated the data before importing it into my semantic model.
  • I could then create a new measure as shown below.
  • As well as any of the other formatting relationships, new columns, new tables as we do within Power BI Desktop.
  • And the best thing is that this is always auto saving and creating versions, so there is no need to save the semantic model when I am finished.

Creating a Version

What I could then do is create a version for version history in case I ever wanted to roll back to what I have currently created. If potentially I’m going to make a braking change or want to just make sure that I have a version saved.

  • I click on File and then click Save to version history.
  • Just remember that you can only save five versions in the web modeling experience, so just something to be aware of.

Using Tabular Editor to Edit my Online Semantic Model

The good news is that you can also use Tablet Editor 2 or 3 to edit the semantic model online, which is sometimes easier to do things such as creating measures. Some of the other advanced features.

  • Here I connected to my Semantic model using Tabular Editor 2.
  • I then created a new measure called Count of Responses in Tablet Editor too.
  • I then clicked on save which saved this back to my online Semantic model.
  • Then in the Power BI service, I had to refresh the page to see the new measure which I had created.

Summary

In this blog post I have shown you how you can use the online experience to create a power BI semantic model which alleviates a lot of the pain previously by having to install either. Power BI Desktop or to have a Windows PC running to use Power BI desktop.