We are excited to announce that we have just released the April update for the On-premises data gateway. Here are some of the things that we would like to highlight with this month’s release:
- Public preview for custom data connectors support in the personal gateway.
- SAP Business Warehouse Server (BW) single sign-on support using Kerberos.
- The on-premises data gateway now includes the April version of the mashup engine.
Custom data connectors support in the personal gateway
Data Connectors for Power BI enables users to connect to and access data from an application, service, or data source. For some time now, you have been able to develop custom connectors and use them in Power BI Desktop.Starting with the April release of Power BI Desktop, you can find and explore new partner developed custom connectors by clicking on the “Certified Connectors” link in the “Get Data” dialog. You can find more details on how to develop and use custom data connectors here.
Today we are excited to announce that we added support for custom data connectors in the on-premises data gateway (personal mode). The support for custom connectors in the Enterprise gateway will follow in a future release.
With this new capability, you can now not only develop reports in Power BI Desktop using custom connectors, but also refresh those reports in the Power BI service through the personal gateway.
Here is a quick guide on how to enable and use this new capability
When you install the April version of the on-premises data gateway (personal mode), you’ll see a new “Connectors” tab in the configurator with an option to toggle the custom data connectors support on and off.
Make sure the custom data connectors toggle is on (you may be asked to restart the gateway). Once turned on, the gateway will load all the custom connectors available in your local custom connectors folder. You will notice that the gateway uses the same custom connectors folder as the Power BI Desktop by default, but you can use the folder picker to change it if you wish.
Once loaded in the gateway, you will be able to use those custom connectors to refresh you reports on the Power BI service. Simply upload your PBIX file to Power BI, navigate to the dataset settings page, select the option to “Use your data gateway (personal mode)” and enter your credentials by clicking on the “Edit credentials” link.
A few important things to note
- For custom connectors to work with the on-premises data gateway, they need to implement a “TestConnection” section in the custom connector’s code. This is not required when using custom connectors with Power BI Desktop, so you could have one that works with the Desktop but not with the gateway for this reason. Please refer to this documentation on how to implement a TestConnection section.
- Changing the custom connectors folder, adding new custom connectors, or removing existing ones from the folder will require a gateway restart for that change to take effect. Simply click on the “Restart now” option under the “Service Settings” tab in the configurator.
- You may see the below message in the dataset settings page. This means that the custom connector used with this dataset is not properly loaded in the gateway. Once loaded correctly using the guidance mentioned in this blog, clicking on “Discover data sources” should re-evaluate the queries and fix the problem.
SAP Business Warehouse Server (BW) single sign-on support using Kerberos
Power BI has supported SAP BW connectivity for some time now. Here is a document describing how SAP customers can benefit from connecting Power BI to their existing SAP BW systems. The document also explains how to configure and use single sign-on with Kerberos when connecting with Power BI Desktop.Today we are announcing that we extended this same single sign-on functionality to the on-premises data gateway as well. Simply choose “Windows” as the authentication method and pick the “Kerberos” option from the “SNC Library” dropdown menu.
Updated version of the mashup engine
Last but not least, this gateway update includes the same version of the Mashup engine as the Power BI Desktop update released earlier this month. This will ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the gateway will go through the same query execution logic/runtime as in the latest Power BI Desktop version. Note that there are some Beta connectors that are still not supported outside of Power BI Desktop. Please refer to specific connector documentation for more details or contact us if you have any questions.
That’s all for this month’s gateway update. We hope that you find these enhancements useful and continue sending us feedback for what new capabilities you’d like to see in the future.
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