[NEWBIE] Question about third party developer, gateway and setting the data source issue

[rem_time]

Hi Everyone!

New guy here! I have a couple of questions about dashboard in Power BI Report Server but before that, a quick back story:

I am currently working with a third-party team in creating our company's dashboard and we're at the part of doing a scheduled refresh. From what I know, they use PowerBI desktop to develop the dashboard and PowerBI cloud(?) to share the dashboard.  Our company data sources are coming from both the SQL Server and SharePoint (I think we'll be using local shared drives at some point) and she was able to schedule a refresh on her side (third-party) using a gateway.  While in our company, I only saw us use PowerBI Desktop and PowerBI Report Server and not PowerBI Cloud(?).

My question now is when the dashboard is finished, what are the ways they will store the dashboard in our local server and do we need to set-up a gateway in our company as well for the dashboard to run even if all our data is stored within our company?

I tried to do a scheduled refresh in the PowerBI Report Server but I am having credentials issue with setting the data source from SharePoint. My windows account can access our SharePoint but when I set the datasource, I always get the "Couldn't Connect" issue.

I don't know if my question makes sense but i'm new to all this so please bear with me.  

Thanks in advance to whoever answers this. 🙂

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

---

@rem_time wrote:

From what I know, they use PowerBI desktop to develop the dashboard and PowerBI cloud(?) to share the dashboard. 

---

This is a really dangerous thing to do. Because there is a specific version of Power BI Desktop optimized for Report Server. If you use the cloud version of Desktop the chances are that there may be functionality used that does not exist on Report Server. And the report that is being developed may not be able to be uploaded to the Report Server since report server is only updated every 4 months and there may be updates to the file format which Report Server cannot read - this could mean your entire report would need to be re-built.

---

@rem_time wrote:

do we need to set-up a gateway in our company as well for the dashboard to run even if all our data is stored within our company?

---

No, Report Server cannot actually connect to data gateways. But if both the SQL Server and the Report Server are on-prem a data gateway is not required anyway.

---

@rem_time wrote:

I tried to do a scheduled refresh in the PowerBI Report Server but I am having credentials issue with setting the data source from SharePoint. My windows account can access our SharePoint but when I set the datasource, I always get the "Couldn't Connect" issue.

Yes, this is one of the known limitations of Report Server. There are a number of data sources which are not supported for Scheduled Refresh (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/data-sources ) If you cannot keep the report in the cloud you either need to try and move the data to one of the other sources that is supported for scheduled refresh or build some sort of load script that can periodically copy the data from Sharepoint online to one of the supported data sources (like a network share or a local SQL Server database)