SQL Azure connector with Azure AD Auth

This feature has shipped in the January 2018 update for Power BI Desktop. Please refer to the official announcement for more details: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-january-2018-feature-summary/#AADauth

Agreed with the idea. As SQL Azure Database itself is ready to implement stringent security requirements (AAD auth, RLS etc.), Power BI should start adding support for these.

Would be a very important capability to support different databases row-level security option.

This implementation may be what slows us on the Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Looking forward to the Azure AD Auth!

We would like to utilize Power BI to connect to Azure SQL DB via AAD, in DirectQuery mode, with RLS implemented in the SQL DB for implementing row-level security. Objectives here are (a) manage RLS in the source so it's reusable & consistent across numerous datasets & reports rather than contained in one single Power BI file, (b) utilize DirectQuery because dataset is larger than the 1GB limit for importing/refreshing in Power BI, and (c) utilize Azure Active Directory for authentication so users don't have to keep track of a separate ID/PW.

Hard to connect and configure azure to use AD Auth

It is possible to connect to Azure SQL DB using AAD though ODBC 13.1 . But this requires a gateway for data refresh. So yes, please update Power Bi Azure SQL DB and DWH connectivity to support AD Universal Authentication, like other tools (e.g. SSMS) do.

yeah. Spent quite a lot of time setting up Azure AD including an Azure AD group so users could use Windows authentication to the database from SQL Management Studio only to find that when they use Power BI Desktop they have to use SQL Authentication

Have asked Miguel (the product owner for this area) to take a look. Thanks

As stated in a previous comment, having to use SQL authentication means we need to roll our own row and table level security.