Forum Discussion
Authenticate Google Users
- 18 days ago
Hi mzimb,
tayloramy is right that Power BI Report Server does not have a built-in Google Workspace authentication provider, but there is one additional option worth mentioning.
PBIRS supports custom authentication/security extensions, so it is possible in principle to replace the normal Windows authentication flow with a custom identity implementation.
Microsoft also provides a Custom Security Sample specifically for Power BI Report Server.
So the distinction is:
- Native "Sign in with Google" support: No
- Authenticate through Google using a custom PBIRS security extension: Technically possible, but requires custom development.
You would need to implement the Google OAuth/OIDC sign-in flow and map the authenticated Google identity to the user identity that PBIRS uses for authorization.There are a few important side effects to test before removing the server from AD. For example, Microsoft documents that Power BI Desktop cannot save directly to a PBIRS instance using custom security, so PBIX files need to be uploaded through the portal. Any reports that currently depend on Windows Integrated authentication/Kerberos for their data sources would also need to be reviewed separately.
For RLS, PBIRS can use the username supplied by the custom authentication implementation, as described in the Report Server RLS documentation.
So I would treat Google authentication as a custom-security-extension project rather than an AD configuration change, and validate it in a separate PBIRS environment before removing the existing domain dependency.
AI-assisted drafting: AI was used to help structure and phrase this response. I reviewed and validated the technical content before posting.
Hi mzimb,
tayloramy is right that Power BI Report Server does not have a built-in Google Workspace authentication provider, but there is one additional option worth mentioning.
PBIRS supports custom authentication/security extensions, so it is possible in principle to replace the normal Windows authentication flow with a custom identity implementation.
Microsoft also provides a Custom Security Sample specifically for Power BI Report Server.
So the distinction is:
- Native "Sign in with Google" support: No
- Authenticate through Google using a custom PBIRS security extension: Technically possible, but requires custom development.
You would need to implement the Google OAuth/OIDC sign-in flow and map the authenticated Google identity to the user identity that PBIRS uses for authorization.
There are a few important side effects to test before removing the server from AD. For example, Microsoft documents that Power BI Desktop cannot save directly to a PBIRS instance using custom security, so PBIX files need to be uploaded through the portal. Any reports that currently depend on Windows Integrated authentication/Kerberos for their data sources would also need to be reviewed separately.
For RLS, PBIRS can use the username supplied by the custom authentication implementation, as described in the Report Server RLS documentation.
So I would treat Google authentication as a custom-security-extension project rather than an AD configuration change, and validate it in a separate PBIRS environment before removing the existing domain dependency.
AI-assisted drafting: AI was used to help structure and phrase this response. I reviewed and validated the technical content before posting.