Getting Process ID using M in Power BI desktop

[luisrh]

Hello:

I am looking to be able to do something I have been able to do in Excel Add-ins with Power BI desktop and one of my needs is to be able to get the Process ID of the PBI client in order to pass this down to some HTTP(s)  web service endpoints.   Is there a way to do this?   I looked at the existing functions and there is nothing that could help me?

Is there some type of workaround and/or will you be providing this in the future.   M is powerful,  but in order to be able to interoperate with web services,  etc,  there is other support needed.

Thanks for any help or insight anyone may have.

Luis.

[curth · Accepted solution]

There's currently no way to do this -- and to be honest, we're not likely to add it. But I'm still curious to understand how this is used by the web service you're trying to access.

[luisrh]

this allows us to maintain context from where requests are coming from.   When requests come into load balancers,  you always get the same IP not the original IP the request came from.

[curth]

What's the unit of granularity that would be most useful here? The machine? The query? A single process can be used for multiple queries, and the same (or similar) queries could come from multiple processes.

[jrsilva24]

Hi Curth,

My name is Jose and I would like to know if this feature was added. We are in a similar situation to the orginal poster and would like to receive some sort of unique identifier, preferably the process id as well as the machine name. We need something that is a unique id. I had asked one of your representatives if that option was available and they stated that it was not, but would be by 2016. Do you know if this feature was added or if there is any way of obtaining some unique identifier we could use?

Thank You,

Jose

[curth]

No, nothing like this has been added. I have basically the same question as before: what scope of uniqueness are you looking for? The workbook/PBIX file? The query? The lifetime of the Excel/Power BI Desktop process? If I can better understand your requirements, we might be able to figure something out.

[Greg_Deckler]

What Add-in for Excel are you using?

[luisrh]

Add ins that we have written.    We can't do that with PBI desktop and I am primarily trying to do this thru M from PBI Desktop not Excel and/or power query in Excel.