Reuse a previously published datasource in a Power BI report - powerbi

Question

I have developed a Power BI report using Power BI Desktop, pointing to a private on premise development database as the datasource so that I was able to develop and test it easily. Then, I published it from my Power BI Desktop pbix to the work area of my customer.
As a result, the work area contains the published report and the dataset. Later, my customer has changed the dataset so that it now points to the correct on premise production database of their own. It works perfectly.
Now, I want to publish a new report for my customer using the previously published and reconfigured dataset. The problem is that I can't see any option in Power BI Desktop to have the report point to the published dataset, nor I can't see any option to avoid creating a new dataset each time I publish a report, nor any way to reconfigure from the web portal the new published report to point to the same dataset as the first one.
Is there any way to do this or any work around for this scenario? I think the most reasonable solution would be to be able to change the dataset of any report, so that the datasets of any report could be interchangeable.
Update:
I had already used connection specific parameters, but I'm not given rights to change the published dataset, so thats a dead end.
Another thing I have come up to is that in Power BI Desktop you cannot change the connection parameters values to those of production enviroment and publish the report if you can't access the target database from your computer, because PowerBI Desktop ask you to apply changes first, and when it tries to apply the values it tries to connect to the corresponding database and, obviously, ends with a network related error or timeout error trying to connect to the database server, therefore cancelling changes and returning to the starting point.

Answer 1

It's always a good practice to use connection specific parameters to define the data source. This means that you do not enter server name directly, but specify it indirectly using a parameter. The same for the database name, if applicable.
If you are about to make a new report, cancel Get data dialog, define parameters as described bellow, and then in Get data specify the datasource using these parameters:
To modify an existing report, open Power Query Editor by clicking Edit Queries and in Manage Parameters define two new text parameters, lets name them ServerName and DatabaseName:
Set their current values to point to one of your data sources, e.g. SQLSERVER2016 and AdventureWorks2016. Then right click your query in the report and open Advanced Editor. Find the server name and database name in the M code:
and replace them with the parameters defined above, so the M code will look like this:
Now you can close and apply changes and your report should work as before. But now when you want to change the data source, do it using Edit Parameters:
and change the server and/or database name to point to the other data source, that you want to use for your report:
After changing parameter values, Power BI Desktop will ask you to apply the changes and reload the data from the new data source. To change the parameter values (i.e. the data source) of a report published in Power BI Service, go to dataset's settings and enter new server and/or database name:
If the server is on-premise, check the Gateway connection too, to make sure that it is configured properly to use the right gateway. You may also want to check the available gateways in Manage gateways:
After changing the data source, refresh your dataset to get the data from the new data source. With Power BI Pro account you can do this 8 times per 24 hours, while if the dataset is in a dedicated capacity, this limit is raised to 48 times per 24 hours.
This is a easy way to make your reports "switchable", e.g. for switching one report from DEV or QA to PROD environment, or as part of your disaster recovery plan, to automate switching all reports in some workgroup to another DR server. In your case, this will allow you (or your customers) to easily switch the datasource of the report.

Answer 2

I think the only correct answer is that it cannot be done, at least at this moment.
The most closest way of achieving this is with Live connections:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-report-lifecycle-datasets
But if you have already designed your report without using the Live connection but your own development enviroment and corresponding connection parameters then you are lost, your only chance is redo all your report with the Live Connection, or the queerest one solution, to use an alias in your configuration matching the name of the database server and the same database name that in the target production environment.