Promoting or certifying Power BI content is a crucial governance feature that helps organizations establish trust and reliability in their business intelligence assets. This process involves marking datasets, reports, dataflows, and apps with endorsement labels to indicate their quality and readine…Promoting or certifying Power BI content is a crucial governance feature that helps organizations establish trust and reliability in their business intelligence assets. This process involves marking datasets, reports, dataflows, and apps with endorsement labels to indicate their quality and readiness for use across the organization.
There are two levels of endorsement in Power BI: Promotion and Certification.
Promotion is a lighter endorsement level that content owners can apply to their own work. When you promote content, you signal to other users that it is valuable, worthwhile, and ready for broader consumption. Any content owner with edit permissions can promote their datasets, reports, or other artifacts. This is ideal for content that has been tested and validated but does not require formal organizational approval.
Certification represents a higher level of trust and requires administrative configuration. Only users who have been designated as certifiers by the Power BI administrator can certify content. Certified content appears with a special badge indicating it has met organizational quality standards and has been reviewed by authorized personnel. Administrators must enable certification in the tenant settings and specify which users or security groups have certification privileges.
To promote content, navigate to the item settings and select the endorsement option, then choose Promoted. For certification, follow the same path but select Certified, which requires appropriate permissions.
Endorsed content receives priority in search results and discovery experiences, making it easier for users to find trusted data sources. This reduces the risk of users relying on outdated or inaccurate information.
Best practices include establishing clear criteria for what qualifies content for each endorsement level, documenting the certification process, and regularly reviewing endorsed content to ensure it remains accurate and relevant. Organizations should also communicate endorsement policies to all users so they understand the significance of these labels when selecting data sources for their analyses.
Promote or Certify Power BI Content in Power BI
Understanding how to promote and certify content in Power BI is essential for the PL-300 exam and for maintaining data governance in your organization.
Why It Is Important
In organizations with numerous reports, datasets, and dataflows, users often struggle to identify which content is trustworthy and authoritative. Promotion and certification provide a way to endorse content, helping users discover high-quality, reliable assets. This endorsement system reduces confusion, improves user confidence, and supports better decision-making across the organization.
What It Is
Power BI offers two levels of endorsement:
Promoted Content: Workspace members with Contributor, Member, or Admin roles can mark content as promoted. This indicates the content is valuable and ready for wider use. Promotion is a self-service action that content owners can perform themselves.
Certified Content: Certification is a higher level of endorsement that requires specific permissions granted by the Power BI administrator. Only users authorized in the tenant settings can certify content. Certified content is considered the official, trusted source of truth for the organization.
How It Works
1. To Promote Content: Navigate to the workspace, select the dataset, report, or dataflow, click the three dots menu, select Settings, and under Endorsement, choose Promoted.
2. To Certify Content: The process is similar, but you select Certified instead. However, certification requires that the Power BI admin has enabled certification in tenant settings and added you to the list of authorized certifiers.
3. Visibility: Endorsed content displays badges in the Power BI service. Promoted items show a badge icon, while certified items display a distinct certification badge, making them easily identifiable.
4. Filtering: Users can filter content by endorsement status when searching or browsing, helping them find trusted content quickly.
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Promote or Certify Power BI Content
• Remember that anyone with Contributor role or higher in a workspace can promote content, but only authorized users specified by the admin can certify content.
• Questions may test whether you understand the difference between promotion and certification. Promotion is self-service; certification requires admin authorization.
• Know that endorsement settings are configured in the Admin Portal under Tenant Settings.
• Be aware that endorsement applies to datasets, dataflows, reports, and apps.
• If a question asks about establishing a single source of truth, certification is typically the correct answer.
• Watch for scenarios describing governance requirements. Strong governance typically requires the certification process with controlled access to who can certify.
• Remember that endorsement badges appear in search results, lineage views, and the Get Data experience, making trusted content discoverable.