Direct Lake mode for Power BI desktop

[amaaiia]

I want to generate reports in Power BI Desktop pulling data from a Lakehouse that I have in a Fabric workspace. All this, with the Direct Lake connection mode.

I have created a semantic model from Fabric, and I see that the semantic model is in Direct Lake mode. From Power BI Desktop, I go to Get Data> Power BI semantic model, and select that semantic model. When it finishes loading, I see from Desktop that it's in SQL Server Analytics Services (Live Connection) mode.

How can I work with Direct Lake mode from Power BI Desktop? I need to work from the Desktop version because of the DAX functionalities that the online version of Fabric does not allow.

[v-huijiey-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @amaaiia ,

When connecting to a semantic model from Power BI Desktop in Direct Lake mode, the model may appear to be in SQL Server Analytics Services (Live Connection) mode due to the underlying technology used for the connection.

This does not necessarily mean that you are not benefiting from the Direct Lake Mode feature, Direct Lake Mode utilizes the Analysis Services engine, which is why it may appear as such.

Please follow these steps:

1. Get data>>Lakehouses>>Connect

2. Just select the one you want to connect to.

3. You can now use the DAX feature in Power BI Desktop.

Or you can do it directly in Power BI Service.

Select the semantic model in the Lakehouse you created >> select Open Data Model to open a web modeling experience where you can add table relationships and DAX measure.

For more details, please refer to the following documentation:

Learn how to create a Lakehouse for Direct Lake in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric - Power BI | Micros...

If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,
Yang
Community Support Team

If there is any post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution  to help the other members find it more quickly.
If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let us know. Thanks a lot!

[Element115]

Sorry, didn't realize that the Get data GUI was showing different choices depending on whether you opened it from PBI Desktop or the Power Query Editor (I was in the latter).

[Element115]

And the lakehouse URL doesn't work:

the results in this error after attempting to connect:

And yes the firewall is OK because all report refreshes through the data gateway to the on-prem DB work without an issue. The GW has also been updated like 2 weeks ago or so.

So what do we do here?

[Element115]

@v-huijiey-msft How come I don't get the same UI as you in PBI Desktop Version: 2.127.1327.0 64-bit (March 2024)?


I can only select Lakehouse if I plug in the workspace ID and lakehouseID directly in the M query.  

What's going on and what's the solution here?

[amaaiia]

Just as an update, I am publishing the reports in Fabric from the Desktop application. That is, I work in Desktop, but I visualize in Fabric (to grant access to more users). What I have done is to publish the reports in Sharepoint and import them from Sharepoint into Fabric. The semantic model that I have associated to the report it's been created in Fabric, where it works in Direct Lake mode. When I open the report in Desktop the Live Connection mode is activated, but when I publish the report to Fabric, when I open the report in Fabric it pulls the same semantic model that I have in Fabric and therefore it is doing it in Direct Lake mode.

That is, same report but Live Connection when opening in Desktop and Direct Lake when opening in Fabric.