PBIR Design Analyzer
PBIR Design Analyzer 1.0.0 is the current cross-platform Analytics Experience Review Platform release.
It helps consultants, BI architects, analytics teams, Power BI developers, and Fabric developers review PBIR reports and analytical Fabric Apps through one shared workspace.
Documentation: How To Use PBIR Design Analyzer
Why Teams Use It
Most report-review tools stop at scorecards or metadata checks.
PBIR Design Analyzer is designed for real review work:
- Story Assessment to show what a page or app experience is trying to communicate, whether the message succeeds, what gets in the way, and guided top improvements with one-click navigation to the exact page or visual involved
- Issues Workspace to surface findings across design quality, usability, accessibility, actionability, consistency, navigation, and governance
- Fix Plan to turn findings into remediation steps, advisory recommendations, and deterministic fix opportunities where safe support exists
- Evidence so recommendations stay tied to metadata, navigation, screenshots, semantic-model usage, and other supporting evidence
- Fabric App Readiness to assess which PBIR assets are strong candidates for Fabric App evolution and which ones need redesign first
- Fabric App Review to review analytical Fabric Apps through the same workspace
- Rendered Review as an optional human checklist for concerns such as whitespace balance, KPI prominence, and page readability, with manual screenshot attachment as evidence
- AI Proposal Enrichment to provide clearer explanations, prioritization guidance, business rationale, and expected outcomes without bypassing deterministic execution
- Collapsible workspace layout so reviewers reach Issues and Fix Plan immediately after Overview, with the remaining sections collapsed until opened
- Cross-platform support so the same workspace is available on Windows x64, Windows arm64, Linux x64, macOS x64, and macOS arm64
What’s New In 1.0.0
New
- Guided Story Improvements inside Story Assessment, with one-click navigation to the exact page or visual behind each recommendation
- a What Changed summary inside Story Assessment comparing the latest review against the previous one
- a collapsible workspace layout: Issues and Fix Plan now sit directly under Overview, and Issues, Fix Plan, Review Summary, Story Assessment, and Rendered Review are collapsed by default until opened
Improved
- Optimization Report scoring is more resilient to reports exported by different Power BI Desktop versions
- navigation actions and other in-panel actions now surface a clear error message instead of failing silently
Fixes
- fixed Attach Screenshot silently doing nothing inside the Rendered Review checklist
- fixed a transport-layer bug that could cause Optimization Report scoring to fail with a generic bounded-request error
- fixed inconsistent success and failure reporting when a report import could not be completed
Story Assessment
- page purpose and audience fit
- headline-to-evidence flow
- summary-to-detail sequencing
- analytical clarity and actionability
Issues Workspace
- layout and density problems
- navigation and drill-path friction
- accessibility and readability concerns
- design consistency gaps
- weak benchmark or decision-support framing
- governance concerns
Fix Plan
- remediation guidance tied to findings
- advisory recommendations that explain why a change matters
- deterministic fix opportunities for supported scenarios
- preview, apply, rollback, and re-analysis for the deterministic execution path
Evidence
- metadata evidence
- navigation evidence
- screenshot evidence
- semantic-model evidence
- code-derived evidence
- framework analysis and supporting review detail
Fabric App Readiness
- migration candidates
- blockers and unsupported patterns
- redesign effort
- Fabric App suitability
Fabric App Review
- analytical Fabric App structure and experience quality
- navigation clarity
- design-token evidence
- screenshot-backed review
- semantic-model usage evidence
Quick Start
- Open a local PBIP project or
.Report folder.
- Run PBIR Design Analyzer: Score Report.
- Start in Overview to understand overall quality, top risks, and story health.
- Open Issues, directly beneath Overview, to triage findings by severity, page, dimension, and scope.
- Open Fix Plan to sequence remediation and apply supported deterministic fixes where available.
- Open Story Assessment for guided top improvements, and Evidence to inspect proof, supporting signals, and migration-readiness rationale.
Review Workspace
Overview stays open by default. Every other section below it, including Issues and Fix Plan, is collapsed until you open it, so you can go straight to the part of the review you need.
Overview
Use Overview to understand:
- overall analytics experience quality
- top strengths and top risks
- story gaps across the report
- which pages need attention first
- whether the asset is a strong Fabric App candidate
Issues
Use Issues as the primary review surface when you need to inspect:
- design issues
- usability issues
- accessibility concerns
- navigation problems
- actionability gaps
- governance concerns
Fix Plan
Use Fix Plan when you need an action-oriented remediation workflow instead of a raw list of findings.
It brings together:
- remediation guidance
- advisory recommendations
- business rationale
- deterministic fix opportunities for supported cases
Story Assessment
Use Story Assessment to understand what a page is trying to communicate and what gets in the way, including guided top improvements with one-click navigation to the exact page or visual involved.
Rendered Review
Use Rendered Review for a human checklist covering whitespace balance, KPI prominence, title wrapping, crowded visuals, table readability, color harmony, and page readability. Attach a screenshot manually as evidence for each item; an external tool such as PBI Lens can help you capture those screenshots faster, though PBIR Design Analyzer does not integrate with it.
Evidence
Use Evidence when you want to verify why a finding or recommendation exists before you act on it.
Export
Export stays downstream from review so the product remains focused on evaluation first and deliverables second.
Deterministic Fix Workflow
PBIR Design Analyzer preserves a strict execution boundary.
Supported deterministic fixes can:
- preview exact changes before apply
- support grouped review and approval
- apply safe metadata and layout edits in supported areas
- roll back changes if the outcome is not acceptable
- trigger re-analysis after apply
The platform does not use advisory recommendations to generate or apply freeform mutations.
Review Modes
The workspace supports review modes for:
- Default
- Executive
- Consultant
- Governance
- Accessibility
These modes change emphasis and presentation. They do not change scoring outcomes.
Cross-Page Matrix
The Overview matrix helps reviewers move from high-level concerns to the exact page and review dimension that needs attention.
Core Commands
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Open PBIP Project
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Refresh Reports
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Score Report
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Copy Score Diagnostics
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Configure Scoring
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Check Governance
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Export Governance Report
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Export Review Workflow Summary
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Upload Report Screenshots
- PBIR Design Analyzer: Configure Visual Audit Provider
PBIR Design Analyzer treats cross-platform score determinism as a release requirement.
- the same report fingerprint must produce the same score, issue counts, readiness score, analyzer metadata, and findings on every supported platform
- theme, locale, path separators, newline style, and filesystem traversal order must not change scoring outcomes
Use PBIR Design Analyzer: Copy Score Diagnostics after scoring to capture:
- extension version
- backend version
- platform and architecture
- analyzer type and analyzer profile
- report fingerprint
- page processing order
- finding IDs and evidence counts
The command copies the current score diagnostic JSON to the clipboard and the same payload is written to the PBIR Score Diagnostics output channel.
To compare two captured diagnostics locally:
cd vscode-extension
node scripts/compare-score-diagnostics.mjs /path/to/first.json /path/to/second.json
Settings
Current shared settings focus on governance:
powerbi-modeling.governance.enabledpowerbi-modeling.governance.minimumCompositeScorepowerbi-modeling.governance.approvedThemeIds
Most review behavior and scoring emphasis are managed through the extension workspace rather than a large static settings surface.
Requirements
- VS Code 1.93+
- .NET 8 available on the machine for the packaged analyzer backend on supported public targets
- a local Power BI project using PBIP or PBIR files
- Windows x64
- Windows arm64
- Linux x64
- macOS x64
- macOS arm64
Install the VSIX that matches your operating system and architecture. Each package includes the correct backend binary for its target platform.
Runtime expectation for the public 1.0.0 packages:
- Windows x64 requires the matching .NET 8 runtime
- Windows arm64 ships with a self-contained backend for
1.0.0
- Linux x64 requires the matching .NET 8 runtime
- macOS x64 requires the matching .NET 8 runtime
- macOS arm64 requires the matching .NET 8 runtime
The Windows arm64 package is intentionally larger than the other target-specific VSIX files because it bundles the .NET runtime inside the backend payload for startup reliability on Windows 11 ARM.
If the backend cannot be found or started, the extension enters degraded mode:
- local PBIR tree browsing still works
- score, governance, and backend-dependent review commands stay unavailable
- the status bar and startup messages explain what is missing
Final 1.0.0 VSIX Files
The final 1.0.0 package set includes:
pbir-design-analyzer-1.0.0-win32-x64.vsixpbir-design-analyzer-1.0.0-win32-arm64.vsixpbir-design-analyzer-1.0.0-linux-x64.vsixpbir-design-analyzer-1.0.0-darwin-x64.vsixpbir-design-analyzer-1.0.0-darwin-arm64.vsix
Install the exact file that matches the target operating system and architecture.
Icon Rendering Note
The icon source PNG is transparent and the packaged icon should match it byte-for-byte.
If VS Code shows the icon on a light tile in the extension details page, treat that as VS Code rendering behavior rather than a package defect.
Manual Marketplace Publishing
1.0.0 is prepared for manual Marketplace upload by the release owner.
Keep all five target-specific VSIX files together for the same extension version and manually upload the full set for the 1.0.0 listing.
Scope
PBIR Design Analyzer is built for local analytics experience review, governance review, and migration-readiness assessment. It is not positioned as a general Fabric authoring tool, TMDL editor, or live service-management console.
Interactive Authoring
The authoring workflow currently supports one user-facing mutation: Rename Page.
Use the following flow:
- Import a supported PBIR report.
- Run Rename Page from the Command Palette.
- Select a page and enter its new display name.
- Review the backend-generated semantic preview.
- Confirm or cancel the mutation.
- Review the analyzer score before and after the rename.
The original imported snapshot remains unchanged. A successful mutation returns a new opaque artifact handle. Preview does not materialize a report, and same-name renames are deterministic no-ops. Other mutation kinds, undo/redo, graphical editing, and raw JSON editing are not exposed.
Detailed Usage Guide
For setup, workflow details, scoring interpretation, and review guidance, see How To Use PBIR Design Analyzer.
Feedback And Issues
Submit bugs, feature requests, support questions, and documentation fixes in the GitHub repo:
