Enhance your data workflows with Databricks’ latest feature– “Publish to Microsoft Power BI Service from Unity Catalog”. By the end of this blog post, you will learn how this feature will benefit your data team and simplify your process from raw data to actionable insights. If you are a data leader or part of a wider team and always struggled with governance and simply managing datasets for Power BI Premium, this is the blog for you.
This new feature from Databricks solves the age-old problem data teams often face which is the disconnect between their data and business intelligence tools. If you have worked in data, I’m sure you have been through the process of carefully building table constraints in your database and then to only replicate this and manage access in Power BI. Databricks’ new feature with Power BI eliminates this redundant time-consuming activity and combines it into a single source of truth removing potential data inconsistencies. It tackles the issue data teams constantly face to maintain consistency between platforms.
In a recent project with one of our clients, we had the opportunity to try this feature for ourselves and immediately witnessed the benefits it presented to us and our clients.
What is Databricks Unity Catalog?
Databricks Unity Catalog is a centralised governance solution for managing data, assets, and security across an organisation. A key benefit to this is unified access control with centralised policies across multiple workspaces guaranteeing permissions are consistently enforced. It is the one-stop shop to manage permissions for all data, notebooks, dashboards, ML models, and now your Power BI datasets with Publish to Power BI feature.
This integration allows you to directly publish data from Databricks to Power BI, enabling more efficient reporting and eliminating manual connection management.

Unity Catalog (Source: Microsoft Learn)
What are the Main Benefits of Publish to Microsoft Power BI Service from Unity Catalog?
Simplified Workflow Management
Long gone are the days of managing gateways and configuring data connectors as this integration automatically manages connections and credentials, eliminating the need for manual setup. Here at Adaptiv, we have witnessed first-hand how it has simplified workflows significantly by streamlining the process of making data readily available for visualisations and analysis with governance applied through the Unity Catalog.
Seamless Schema Integration
The Publish to Power BI feature goes beyond just transferring tables as it integrates the schemas and relationships, eliminating the need to define the relationships in Power BI. The primary and foreign key relationships defined in your data model remain intact when published to Power BI.
Enterprise-Grade Security and Governance
One of the most powerful aspects of this integration is its robust security model. Through native integration with Microsoft Entra ID, the feature provides end-to-end governance and management. The integration ensures individual user identities flow seamlessly into Unity Catalog, with permissions being honoured for every dashboard query. This comprehensive security model extends to include full audit logging of all data access, maintaining consistency across both Databricks and Power BI environments.
Streamlined Data Pipeline Management
For data engineers and analysts, this integration fundamentally transforms the traditional workflow. Data lineage and documentation can now be maintained in a single location, significantly reducing the time traditionally spent on connection management and troubleshooting. This approach ensures that your team can focus on delivering value rather than managing infrastructure.

Publish to Power BI Service from Unity Catalog (Source: Databricks)
Reduced Time-Consuming Redundant Tasks
In our experience working with clients, this integration has demonstrated significant practical benefits. We’ve observed substantial reductions in time-to-insight by eliminating manual steps in the BI process. Data governance has improved significantly through centralised access control, while collaboration between data engineering and analytics teams has become more fluid than ever. Perhaps most importantly, we’ve seen more reliable and consistent reporting outcomes, as the single source of truth eliminates discrepancies that often arise from manual data handling.
How to Connect Publish to Power BI Service from Unity Catalog
It’s very simple and fast to get your dataset live in Power BI from Databricks. Simply navigate to your desired schema or table in Unity Catalog and select Publish to Power BI workspace.
Log in to Power BI, select the workspace you wish to publish to and configure your dataset settings. Power BI Premium is required for the workspace where the dataset will be published.
There you have it! Within a few clicks you have your fully governed and managed dataset live in the Power BI workspace ready to be consumed by end users.
Lessons from the Field
After working with the new publish to Microsoft Power BI Service from Unity Catalog, I wanted to share a few key considerations. The integration efficiently publishes datasets to Power BI whilst maintaining table relationships from Unity Catalog allowing for end-to-end synchronisation across your reporting layer.
Here’s a real scenario we faced while working with a client. We had existing tables in a gold layer schema that had primary and foreign key relationships defined in Unity Catalog. A requirement was to create a new reporting layer that had certain tables in it that would be accessible to analysts. When building a new reporting layer using CREATE TABLE AS SELECT (CTAS), we found that the constraints from the source tables didn’t automatically carry over. Fortunately, we could resolve this using ALTER TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT statements after table creation.
A key point worth noting is that Delta Live Tables (DLT) does support defining constraints through column_properties and column_constraints fields. However, when using CTAS to create reporting tables based on DLT materialised views, you’ll need to add the constraints afterwards since they aren’t included in the CTAS operation.
Conclusion
We believe that the new integration between Power BI and Databricks represents a significant evolution in the modern data reporting stack. By knocking down those data silo doors, Databricks has enabled organisations to build more efficient and secure data pipelines.
The combination of how easy and straightforward it is to setup with essentially one-click publishing to Power BI and the single source of truth for analysts transforms what once was a disparate process into a much smoother experience. If your organisation is heavily invested in Databricks and Power BI this is an absolute must-have tool in your arsenal. It will significantly increase your time to insights whilst maintaining governance and security. Data platforms and tools are growing and evolving at a rapid pace nowadays and this integration between two platforms is a testament to how Databricks set their bar high in terms of product. It sets a new standard for what organisations should expect from their data platform’s governance, quality, and above all simplicity.
At Adaptiv, we pride ourselves in providing top-class data solutions that enable businesses to unlock their true data potential. Whether you have an existing data team and would like to partner with us or you are looking to delve into the world of data, our team of experts is here to help. Get in touch today to explore how we can add value to your organisation!