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ChetanK004's avatar
ChetanK004
Frequent Visitor
10 months ago
Solved

Power BI MCP Server not connecting to Power service

Hi team,   I have set-up the Power BI MCP server(https://github.com/microsoft/powerbi-modeling-mcp) in my local (In both ways Using the extension as well as the local install) I use GitHub copilot ...
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  • v-pnaroju-msft's avatar
    v-pnaroju-msft
    9 months ago

    Hi Robbief,

    Thank you for the update.

    Based on my understanding, there is no configuration or workaround that enables the Power BI Modeling MCP Server to authenticate directly to Power BI Service or Fabric workspaces. The MCP server does not support the interactive WAM/MWC authentication flow required by the Service. This limitation persists regardless of permissions, tenant settings, or account alignment.

    If you need to work with service hosted semantic models or metadata, the available option is XMLA based tooling such as Tabular Editor, which is designed to authenticate to Power BI Service or Fabric. MCP is currently intended for local model scenarios and code generation.

    If this capability is important to your workflow, please raise a request in the Fabric Ideas forum at: https://ideas.fabric.microsoft.com.

    We hope this information helps resolve the issue. Should you have any further queries, please feel free to contact the Microsoft Fabric community.

    Thank you.

v-pnaroju-msft's avatar
v-pnaroju-msft
Icon for Community Support rankCommunity Support
10 months ago

Hi ChetanK004,

Thank you for your inquiry via the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

Based on my understanding, this issue is unlikely to be related to permissions, Fabric enablement, tenant settings, or workspace configuration, since all required prerequisites including Workspace Admin role, dataset permissions, a Fabric trial, tenant level MCP enablement, and XMLA connectivity via Tabular Editor have been correctly configured. The root cause may instead lie in a limitation of the Power BI Modeling MCP server. It is unable to authenticate to Power BI Service or Fabric workspaces because token generation via Microsoft Web Credentials (MWC) fails.

Power BI Service authentication depends on interactive Windows Account Manager (WAM) credential brokering, which is supported by Power BI Desktop and Tabular Editor but not by the headless MCP server. Consequently, authentication fails before permissions are evaluated. This explains why local PBIX models work and why Tabular Editor can successfully connect via XMLA, while the MCP server consistently fails when targeting Power BI Service or Fabric datasets.

One approach is to use MCP for local models only, and to use Tabular Editor for Power BI Service or Fabric models via XMLA.

Additionally, please refer the links below:
Semantic model connectivity and management with the XMLA endpoint in Power BI - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Security in Microsoft Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

We hope the information provided helps to resolve the issue. Should you have any further queries, please feel free to contact the Microsoft Fabric community.

Thank you.