PBI Embedded App Owns Data - Export Data from visual to Excel fails with 403 Forbidden error

[khregs]

Hi,

My team is building a web app with embedded Power BI reports using the app-owns-data method with service principal authentication.

One key feature for our users is the ability export data from a visual to Excel. Clicking the ellipsis > Export data function on a visual displays the Export Data dialog box, but when the "Excel" option is chosen, the resulting file is not downloaded to the browser. Note the "CSV" option does work as expected.

F12 devtools indicate the service endpoint (https://wabi-canada-central-redirect.analysis.windows.net/export/xlsx) returns a 403 Forbidden error with response message "API is not accessible for application".

Can anyone on the forum advise what the issue is here?

Thanks,
Craig

[Anonymous]

I have same issue. If I authenticate as a user I can do both. As a service principal, only csv works. The difference in the way how it does it:

https://wabi-canada-central-redirect.analysis.windows.net/export/xlsx
for excel and this one for csv
https://wabi-canada-central-redirect.analysis.windows.net/explore/querydata

I suspect that my service principal is missing some permissions but can't figure out which one.

[Anonymous]

In my case the issue was caused by using Service Principal account. According to the support, this option has been in preview and will be GA sometime in May. 

[khregs]

Hi @Anonymous 

Apologies for not replying back sooner...

Yes! My team just got back to looking at this problem last week and we were able to make it work by removing the Service Principal authentication and using Master User method instead. Not ideal, but at least it works.

Thanks for relaying the news that Service Principal will be GA later this month. Will keep my eyes open for the announcement.

Cheers,
Craig

[Jayendran]

Hi @khregs / @Anonymous  ,

This is because you are trying to call some Reports/Dashboards that are in My Workspace using the SPN autentication. Currently this is the known limiation for SPN

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embed-service-principal#considerations-and-limitations

You have to use Master account approach in this kind of situation.

[khregs]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I forgot about this one 🙂

First, the reports in question were not in My Workspace, but this is good advice for anyone else who stumbles across this thread. 

Second, the Excel export functionality has been working as expected with SP auth for a while now. I think the issue fixed iteself last May when SP auth went to GA status. Can't remember specifics now. 

Thanks again,

Craig

[khregs]

Note that exporting to Excel works perfectly well from the demo app shown here:

https://fleetdemoapp.azurewebsites.net/