Permissions Issue Connecting Power BI to Azure Synapse Table

Hi Anonymous 

This is not a Power BI bug but an Azure Synapse permissions detail.

Root cause
When using Navigator, Power BI needs metadata permissions on the external objects, not just SELECT. Newer external views require more than SELECT to resolve properly.

Fix
Ask your DBA to grant the following in addition to SELECT:

-- Metadata visibility
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON SCHEMA::WORKING TO [Your-AAD-Group];
GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON SCHEMA::TRUSTED TO [Your-AAD-Group];

-- External object references
GRANT REFERENCES ON DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL::[CredName] TO [Your-AAD-Group];
GRANT REFERENCES ON EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE::[DsName] TO [Your-AAD-Group];
GRANT REFERENCES ON EXTERNAL FILE FORMAT::[ParquetFmt] TO [Your-AAD-Group];

-- Data access (already confirmed but keep for completeness)
GRANT SELECT ON SCHEMA::WORKING TO [Your-AAD-Group];
GRANT SELECT ON SCHEMA::TRUSTED TO [Your-AAD-Group];

Quick validation

Run SELECT TOP 1 * FROM WORKING.<Table> under your AAD identity.

Try SELECT * FROM sys.external_data_sources. If you cannot see rows without VIEW DEFINITION or REFERENCES, that is the missing piece.

Confirm that the new views reference the same EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE and credentials as the older ones.

If after applying these grants the issue persists, open a Microsoft Support ticket so they can trace it directly on your Synapse environment.

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly