Formula.Firewall Error - Using Invoked Custom Function Step

[user131313]

Hey, I've been trying to troubleshoot an error message I'm getting for a long while and have tried all solutions for similar issues I have found on this forum but am still stuck so I'm hoping someone might be able to help me!

I'm combining an excel file from sharepoint with a custom function being used to pull data from a website. The excel file has the URL strings to pass into the function to cycle over the various pages of data to download. This did previously work, however when I've come back to the pbix more recently I am persistently getting the error Formula.Firewall: Query (step Invoked Custom Function) is accessing data sources that have privacy levels which cannot be used together.

I have tried: 

Changing Privacy Settings of Data Sources: I cannot seem to access any option to change the privacy levels of the link to the website as it does not come up as a source under Data Source Settings (perhaps because it's only being accessed through the custom function?). I've tried changing the Excel data source privacy settings to different levels but that doesn't seem to make any difference no matter what I set the Excel file to. Any tips on how to see the website as a relevant data source in the pbix would be very welcome though I'm not sure just working that out will resolve my issue.

Separating the query out into a function to bring in the Excel Data Source: I followed the steps in this post: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Formula-Firewall-Error-in-combination-with-PowerQuery-funct... however I just got a different Formula.Firewall error, this time about not directly accessing data sources in the query instead.

I don't want to remove the firewall entirely from the pbix either. Any ideas for alternative solutions would be very very much appreciated!

Thank you! 🙂

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

You can add a dormant static connection to your web data source so that you can set the sensitivity settings for it.

I know you don't want to do that by is the problem going away when you set the pivacy level to ignore for all connections?

[user131313]

I've spent a bit longer on this and adding in the dormant static connection fixed the issue! It didn't work initially as I set everything to be private to be consistent, I changed it all to organisational and it's working again. Thank you so much for your help! 😀

[user131313]

Hey, 

Thank you for your response! So if I set the privacy level to ignore for all connections it works fine. I also have now set up a static connection to the web data source and set it at the same privacy level, however it doesn't seem to get rid of the error!