Why Your Power BI Reports Require Apostolic Succession

Dear congregation, we scatter reports like leaves in a high wind. And then we wonder why no one can find the tree. Most think a quick share link is harmless. But it breaks lineage, weakens truth, and breeds confusion.Here’s what actually happens when we abandon governance. Manual chaos. Broken RLS. Stale workspaces that quietly mislead. We will establish a sacred pattern. Authoritative datasets. Faithful distribution through Org Apps. And staged deployments as our liturgy. You will leave with a clear pathway to migrate, to adopt pipelines, and to guard access with labels, roles, and tenant discipline. There is one covenant that makes this endure—stay with us.Section I: The Heresy of Manual Sharing—Why Lineage Fails Without Stewardship (650 words)Dear congregation, let us name the sin plainly. Ad‑hoc share links. Email PDFs. Orphaned bookmarks in private folders. No lineage. No accountability. Just fragments of truth torn from their source and traded like rumors in a marketplace.What follows is predictable. Conflicting truths. Two dashboards, same title, different numbers. One copy carries last month’s calculation. Another carries a developer’s untested change. Leaders ask which one is real. We answer with guesses. Wisdom weakens. Community frays.Audit blindness arrives next. When a link spreads beyond our sight, there is no canonical place to trace who saw what and when. We cannot answer basic questions with confidence. Who consumed the sensitive page? Who exported the detailed table? We grope in the dark where we should stand in the light.Then RLS drifts. Roles meant to protect the flock are re‑implemented in each copy. A filter is missed. A condition is inverted. One region sees another’s ledger. Or a manager loses access to their own staff. Exposure and withholding. Both harm the body.Discoverability dies as well. Users beg for links. New joiners ask in chat. Knowledge becomes a scavenger hunt. We shape a culture of favors instead of a pathway of order. When the path is unclear, shadow guides appear. “Use my version,” they say. And the canon fractures.Hold this moral frame. Data without stewardship becomes rumor. Rumor erodes trust and community. We do not gather to trade rumors. We gather to receive truth, to work in unity, to decide with clarity. That requires a doorway. Not a pile of keys.Org Apps are that canonical doorway. The sanctuary where truth is received, not scattered. One entrance. Ordered content. A visible covenant between producers and consumers. When we bless an Org App, we declare: this is where the faithful will find the latest, tested, endorsed truth. Not in a forwarded file. Not in a private bookmark. Here.But hear the warning. Even a doorway fails if the locks are broken. A beautiful entrance means little if the walls do not hold. So let us examine why manual sharing weakens the very locks we rely on.First, lineage. When reports are shared by link outside the app, the chain from report to dataset to certification is hidden from view. Users cannot see endorsements. They cannot see who owns the data. They cannot see refresh health. They consume without context. They decide without confidence.Second, navigation. Manual sharing bypasses the curated order of pages, sections, and overview. The user lands in the middle of a story. They miss the preface. They misunderstand the conclusion. An Org App offers liturgy. Sections for reports. Sections for notebooks. An overview that teaches how to walk. Links that bridge only to governed sources. Manual sharing tears out the bookmarks and throws away the map.Third, change management. A link to a draft becomes a lifeline for a team that never should have seen it. A PDF from a test workspace circulates for months. Meanwhile, the production app is updated and blessed. Manual sharing ignores versions. It creates a chorus of unsynchronized hymns.Fourth, stewardship. Org Apps show owners. They show endorsements. They show labels. They show when content was refreshed. Manual shares hide all of this. They turn stewards into rumor chasers. They replace pastoral care with firefighting.Fifth, culture. When the default is “send me the link,” we teach impatience. We teach exception. We teach that governance is optional when a deadline looms. But remember this truth: haste without order leads to error without mercy. We must teach the community to enter through the door, not climb through the window.So how do we turn? We commit to a simple practice. We publish to a workspace with intention. We build the Org App as the sole doorway. We remove alternate paths. We instruct: if it is not in the app, it is not ready. If it lacks an endorsement, it is not trusted. If it lacks a label, it is not classified. If it bypasses navigation, it is not part of the story.And yet, even with a doorway, we must keep the walls. RLS and OLS are sacred boundaries. They do not live in emails. They do not survive exports. They live in the dataset and in the app’s audiences. Align them. Test them. Guard them. Because once boundaries drift, the sanctuary loses its shape.We have named the heresy of manual sharing. We have seen its fruits: conflicting truths, audit blindness, role drift, and lost pathways. Let us not return to scattered leaves. The doorway stands ready. But to keep it strong, we must speak of guardianship. We must speak of RLS.Section II: When RLS Breaks—Guardianship, Not GuessworkDear congregation, let us face the wound. When RLS breaks, it exposes or withholds. Both harm the body. Exposure shames trust. Withholding starves decision. The sanctuary trembles, not because the data is wrong, but because the boundary failed.Why does it fail? Copies of datasets, each with its own roles. Mismatched role names between environments. Unmanaged audiences that reveal pages to the wrong flock. Brittle testing, done by authors alone, never by the people who actually live inside the rules. These are not accidents. These are practices. And practices can be changed.Hold the law: RLS and OLS are sacred boundaries. They are not suggestions. They are walls. They are doors with names carved above them. They tell each person, “Enter here. Not there.” So we honor them at the source. We model roles at the dataset. We do not patch filters in a report. We do not rely on page‑level illusions. We bind row filters and object limits where the truth is born.Practice this discipline. Start with clear personas. Finance analyst. Store manager. Regional VP. Vendor. Build a test matrix. For each persona, define expected rows, restricted columns, allowed pages, and forbidden exports. Then test in the service, not only in Desktop. Use “view as” with sample users tied to Azure AD groups. Prove that a user in one congregation sees only their pasture. Prove that a steward can survey the field without crossing into private fences.Now, this is important because roles are more than DAX filters. They are relationships. The role name must persist from Development to Test to Production. If the mapping breaks in one stage, drift begins. So we standardize role names. We store them in source control with the PBIR and dataset settings. We script assignments where we can. We document the covenant in plain language. When roles read like scripture, people keep them.App audiences stand beside those roles like ushers at the door. Align them deliberately. Leadership, managers, frontline. Each audience receives only the sections that serve their duty. Do not let navigation cross‑contaminate. Do not show a tab that a role cannot open. Hidden is not governed. Remove what is not theirs. Show what is. This reduces curiosity that tempts boundary testing. It also teaches the user: your path is clear, your duty is enough.Bind sensitivity labels to content as visible vows. If the dataset is Confidential, the report inherits the mark, and the app displays it. Teach the label to travel. Into exports. Into Teams. Into SharePoint. Into email. A label is not decoration. It is a promise that follows the artifact wherever it goes. Without that promise, a harmless screenshot becomes a breach.Define tenant settings as the covenant’s outer wall. Who may publish beyond the organization? Who may share externally? Who may build on certified datasets? Do not leave this to whim. Enforce through security groups. Review quarterly. Record exceptions. We are not closing the gates to keep people out. We are closing the gates to open the right doors with confidence.And yet, even faithful walls require proof. So we test with time. We test after every schema change. We test after role membership shifts in HR. We test when a new region is born. Automate checks where possible. Validate that each audience lands on an allowed page. Validate that each persona returns only their rows. Put a health tile on the steward’s dashboard that turns red when a role assignment is empty, a filter returns zero rows unexpectedly, or a label is missing.Remember this: never patch at the edge. Do not fix a broken role by hiding a visual. Do not fix a leaked column by formatting it blank. These are fig leaves. They cover, but they do not heal. Return to the dataset. Repair the role. Re‑publish through the pipeline. Announce the change in the app’s notes. The body deserves healing, not concealment.Guardianship is not guesswork. It is design. It is rehearsal. It is watchfulness at dawn and dusk. When we keep these boundaries, the sanctuary holds. And the work can proceed in peace.Section III: Stale Workspaces—When the Lamp Goes OutDear congregation, let us walk the nave at night. The lamp has gone out. In forgotten corners, old visuals still glow. A retired dataset hums softly. A bookmark points to a page that no longer speaks. No one tends it. And yet people still come, and they still believe.This is the drift. Abandoned workspaces. Outdated measures that once served well but now mislead. Reports named “Final_v7” that never reached blessing. A refresh failed last quarter, and no one h

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