Course: Microsoft Power BI Training
Topic: Understanding Content Endorsement and Certification
Course Link: Microsoft Power BI Training at JustAcademy
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Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform that helps organizations connect to data, transform it, create data models, and develop interactive reports and dashboards. In a business environment, multiple users and departments may publish reports, semantic models, dashboards, and other analytical content.
As the number of Power BI items grows, users need a reliable way to identify which content is trustworthy, officially supported, and suitable for business decision-making. Power BI addresses this requirement through content endorsement, which includes the promotion and certification of eligible content.
Content endorsement helps organizations distinguish useful, recommended content from ordinary content. It also supports data governance by encouraging users to reuse reliable data sources instead of creating multiple competing versions of the same dataset.
Content endorsement is a Power BI feature that allows organizations to identify and communicate the trustworthiness or recommended use of supported content. It helps users understand whether a particular item is recommended for broader use or has undergone an official certification process.
Certification is a formal endorsement indicating that eligible Power BI content has met an organization's established quality, governance, and reliability requirements. It is generally reserved for content that has been reviewed and approved by authorized individuals.
Power BI provides two primary endorsement labels: Promoted and Certified. These labels communicate different levels of organizational trust and approval.
Promoted content is content that an authorized user identifies as useful and worth recommending to other users. It is suitable when a report or semantic model is helpful for a team, department, or broader audience but does not necessarily require formal organization-wide certification.
For example, a sales analyst might create a monthly sales performance report and promote it so that colleagues can easily recognize it as a recommended resource.
Characteristics of promoted content:
Certified content has undergone a formal approval process defined by the organization. Certification indicates that the content meets the organization's established standards for quality, reliability, and governance.
For example, an organization's central data team may review a company-wide financial semantic model, verify its calculations and data sources, and certify it for use across business departments.
Characteristics of certified content:
| Comparison Point | Promoted Content | Certified Content |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Recommend useful content. | Identify content that has passed formal organizational approval. |
| Approval level | Recommendation by an authorized content owner or user. | Formal approval by an authorized certifier or certification process. |
| Governance | May follow a lightweight recommendation process. | Follows defined organizational certification requirements. |
| Typical use | Team reports and departmental semantic models. | Trusted, standardized content for broader business use. |
| Trust signal | Recommended for use. | Formally approved according to organizational policy. |
| Quality assurance | Depends on the team's review practices. | Depends on the organization's formal certification criteria and review. |
| Example | A useful regional sales report. | An approved enterprise-wide sales semantic model. |
Content endorsement helps create a reliable environment in which users can identify suitable analytical content without independently evaluating every report or semantic model.
In a large Power BI environment, users may encounter many reports with similar names. Endorsement helps users identify items that are recommended or formally approved.
Example: A company has several sales reports created by different analysts. Promoting the preferred report helps employees find the recommended version more easily.
Instead of creating a new semantic model for every report, users can connect to an existing endorsed semantic model when their permissions and requirements allow it.
Reusing trusted models can reduce duplicated work and encourage consistency in calculations, business definitions, and reporting logic.
Data governance establishes rules for managing data quality, ownership, access, security, and appropriate use. Endorsement supports governance by communicating the status of important Power BI content.
Users can use endorsement labels as one factor when deciding which content to use. However, endorsement does not guarantee that every number is correct forever. Data freshness, business definitions, access controls, and ongoing maintenance remain important.
Power BI supports endorsement for eligible content types. The exact options available depend on the item type, workspace configuration, permissions, and the Power BI experience being used.
A semantic model organizes data, relationships, measures, calculations, and business definitions for analytical use. It provides the foundation for reports and other connected analytical experiences.
Endorsing a semantic model can help other report creators identify a recommended or certified source of data.
Reports present data through charts, tables, cards, slicers, and other visual elements. Endorsement can help users identify reports that are recommended for particular analytical tasks.
Additional Power BI content types may support endorsement depending on the current product experience. Always verify the endorsement options available for a specific item rather than assuming that every Power BI object supports the same labels.
Semantic model endorsement is particularly important because a semantic model may serve as the data foundation for multiple reports, dashboards, and business applications.
Imagine that a company has separate sales, finance, and operations teams. Each team needs to analyze revenue, but different analysts calculate revenue differently.
The organization creates a shared semantic model containing approved revenue measures, product categories, regional definitions, and date calculations. After the model is reviewed, the organization certifies it.
Report creators can then reuse the certified model rather than recreating the same business logic in multiple files.
Before promoting or certifying content, users should understand the relevant Power BI permissions and organizational requirements.
Power BI uses permissions and tenant settings to control who can endorse content and who can certify it. The exact requirements depend on the content type and the organization's configuration.
An organization should define its certification criteria before allowing users to certify content. These criteria may include data accuracy, source reliability, documentation, ownership, refresh reliability, security, performance, and business approval.
Before endorsement, verify that the content has a clear purpose, appropriate permissions, meaningful descriptions, and reliable data sources.
The following workflow describes the general process. Interface labels and locations can vary between Power BI experiences and product updates.
Open the report or semantic model in the appropriate Power BI workspace or item-management experience.
Locate the settings or endorsement options associated with the selected item. Ensure that you have permission to edit its settings.
Choose the option to promote or endorse the item as promoted content, where available.
Check the item name, description, owner, data source, and intended audience. Confirm that the item is useful and ready to be recommended.
Save the updated settings. The promoted label can help eligible users recognize the item as recommended content in supported discovery experiences.
Inform relevant users about the endorsed item and explain when it should be used. Good documentation makes the endorsement more useful.
Certification is more formal than promotion. It should be performed only after the content has met the organization's defined approval requirements.
Select the report or semantic model that has been chosen for formal organizational use.
Confirm that the responsible user or group has the necessary certification permissions. If the option is unavailable, contact the Power BI administrator or the designated governance team.
Check that the content uses appropriate data sources and that source ownership, access, and refresh processes are understood.
Compare key measures and report results with approved business definitions, source-system totals, and relevant validation checks.
Verify that permissions, row-level security where applicable, sensitive data handling, and organizational policies have been reviewed.
Ensure that the content has a useful description, a named owner, clear business definitions, and instructions for reporting issues.
Once the formal review is complete, an authorized certifier can apply the certification setting through the available Power BI interface.
Certification should not be treated as permanent proof that the content will always remain accurate. Monitor data refreshes, changes in source systems, business rules, and user feedback.
Data governance defines how data and analytical assets are owned, maintained, secured, documented, and used. Content endorsement is one part of a broader governance framework.
Every important report or semantic model should have an identifiable owner or support team. Users need to know who is responsible for maintenance and questions.
Organizations should define quality checks appropriate to the business context. These may include completeness, validity, consistency, uniqueness, and accuracy.
Endorsement is not a replacement for security permissions. A certified item does not automatically grant every user access to its underlying data.
Descriptions, business definitions, source details, refresh information, and ownership details help users understand and use content correctly.
Governance teams should periodically review endorsed items to confirm that they remain relevant, accurate, secure, and properly maintained.
Endorsement communicates a recommendation or approval status. Data quality describes how well data meets the requirements of its intended use. These concepts are related but not identical.
| Aspect | Content Endorsement | Data Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Communicates recommendation or certification status. | Evaluates whether data meets defined quality standards. |
| Focus | Trust signals and content governance. | Accuracy, completeness, consistency, and validity. |
| How it is established | Through endorsement settings and organizational authorization. | Through validation rules, tests, reviews, and monitoring. |
| Maintenance | Review endorsement when content changes or becomes unsuitable. | Continuously monitor data and correct quality issues. |
Document what a report or semantic model must satisfy before certification. Avoid relying on informal or inconsistent approval decisions.
Ensure that important content has a clear owner responsible for updates, support, documentation, and quality checks.
Promotion can help teams recommend useful content while it is being evaluated for broader use. However, do not promote content that is known to be misleading or unsafe to use.
Explain the meaning of key measures such as revenue, profit, customer retention, and active users. This reduces confusion when reports are reused.
Check refresh schedules, credentials, gateway dependencies where relevant, and failure-monitoring processes.
Grant users only the access they need. Review permissions independently of endorsement status.
Review whether the item is still relevant, supported, and compliant with organizational requirements. Update or remove endorsement when the item no longer meets those requirements.
Explain the difference between promoted and certified content so users understand what each label does and does not guarantee.
Possible causes:
Solution: Verify the item's supported features, confirm the user's permissions, and contact the Power BI administrator when necessary.
Possible causes:
Solution: Contact the designated certification owner or administrator and follow the organization's approval procedure.
Possible causes: The item is in an unexpected workspace, users lack access, the description is unclear, or the user is searching in a location that does not surface the item.
Solution: Improve the item name and description, communicate its location, review access permissions, and use supported discovery experiences.
Possible causes: Source data changed, business definitions were modified, calculations contain errors, or a refresh failed.
Solution: Investigate the source data and model calculations, validate the results, correct the issue, and reassess whether the content should remain certified during the investigation.
Possible causes: Different teams create similar reports without reusing existing semantic models or documenting the preferred version.
Solution: Identify the authoritative report or model, document its purpose, encourage reuse, and review redundant content.
Consider a company that has three regional sales teams. Each team creates a report showing revenue, order volume, and product performance.
The three reports use different definitions of revenue, so managers receive inconsistent results.
The data team builds a common model with approved measures, standardized product categories, and consistent date logic.
The team compares revenue totals with the source system, tests important measures, reviews permissions, and documents the model.
A sales analyst promotes the recommended report so that colleagues can identify it as a useful resource.
An authorized certifier reviews the model against the company's formal criteria and certifies it after approval.
Other report creators connect to the shared model rather than rebuilding the same calculations. This improves consistency and reduces duplicated work.
Objective: Practice evaluating Power BI content for promotion and certification.
You are working in a retail company that has the following Power BI assets:
Answer: Content endorsement identifies eligible Power BI content as recommended or formally approved, helping users discover and reuse reliable analytical resources.
Answer: Promoted and Certified.
Answer: Promoted content is content that an authorized user recommends as useful for others to discover and use.
Answer: Certified content has undergone an organization's formal approval process and meets its established certification requirements.
Answer: Promotion communicates a recommendation, while certification indicates formal organizational approval based on defined criteria.
Answer: Users or groups authorized through the organization's Power BI permissions and certification configuration.
Answer: No. Endorsement and access permissions are separate. Users must still have the appropriate access.
Answer: No. Certification communicates that content passed a defined review, but data, calculations, and business requirements can change. Ongoing monitoring is necessary.
Answer: It helps report creators identify approved data models and reuse standardized measures, relationships, and business definitions.
Answer: Data accuracy, source reliability, refresh processes, security, documentation, ownership, performance, and compliance with organizational policies.
Answer: Verify the item's supported options and your permissions, then contact the authorized certifier or Power BI administrator.
Answer: It communicates which content is recommended or formally approved and encourages consistent, controlled reuse of analytical assets.
Answer: Yes, if the item supports certification, meets the organization's requirements, and receives approval from an authorized certifier.
Answer: Reviews help ensure that content remains accurate, relevant, secure, documented, and aligned with current business requirements.
Answer: No. Endorsement communicates a trust status, whereas data quality testing verifies whether data meets defined standards.
Understanding content endorsement and certification is an important part of working with Microsoft Power BI in a governed business environment. Promotion helps users recognize useful content, while certification identifies content that has met formal organizational approval requirements.
When endorsement is combined with reliable data models, clear documentation, appropriate security, and regular monitoring, organizations can improve content discovery, reduce duplication, and encourage consistent business reporting.
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