Forum Discussion
PBIRS Subscription Parameter Reverts to “Leave NULL” After Saving
Product: Power BI Report Server (PBIRS)
- Version: 1.23.9316.13987 (May 2025 Release)
- Build: 15.0.1118.134
- Environment: On‑premises PBIRS (Native Mode)
When editing or creating a subscription for any paginated report (RDL), parameters set to “Use default value” automatically revert to “Leave NULL” after saving.
This behavior is incorrect because the RDL has a valid default value (in many reports, the default is NULL to represent “ALL”). PBIRS should respect the report’s default, but it overwrites the subscription metadata immediately after saving.
- Recreated subscriptions, but the parameter still reverted to Leave NULL after saving.
- Edited existing subscriptions, but PBIRS overwrote Use default value immediately.
- Deleted and re-uploaded the RDL, yet the subscription parameter behavior did not change.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I would like to add some important context from our side.
We recently completed a large‑scale migration from SSRS SharePoint Integrated Mode to Power BI Report Server (PBIRS), and we have thousands of paginated reports that all follow the long‑established pattern where:
- NULL parameter value = “ALL”
- Default value of the parameter is also NULL
This design has worked perfectly in SharePoint Integrated Mode for many years, including for interactive execution and for subscriptions. Subscriptions always respected the report’s default parameter settings.
However, in PBIRS (May 2025 release), subscription parameter values are automatically changed from “Use default value” to “Leave NULL” immediately after saving—regardless of how the RDL is defined. This creates functional inconsistencies and makes it extremely difficult to manage subscription behavior across so many migrated reports.
Because of the scale of our environment, modifying each report or redesigning parameter patterns is not feasible.
Could you please clarify:
- Is this issue fixed in the September 2025 release or any more recent PBIRS release?
- If not, is this behavior planned to be fixed in an upcoming release?
This subscription behavior worked reliably in SharePoint Integrated Mode, so we want to understand whether PBIRS will eventually bring parity, especially for enterprises with large SSRS workloads.
Thank you again for your support—we appreciate any additional guidance you can provide.
4 Replies
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I would like to add some important context from our side.
We recently completed a large‑scale migration from SSRS SharePoint Integrated Mode to Power BI Report Server (PBIRS), and we have thousands of paginated reports that all follow the long‑established pattern where:
- NULL parameter value = “ALL”
- Default value of the parameter is also NULL
This design has worked perfectly in SharePoint Integrated Mode for many years, including for interactive execution and for subscriptions. Subscriptions always respected the report’s default parameter settings.
However, in PBIRS (May 2025 release), subscription parameter values are automatically changed from “Use default value” to “Leave NULL” immediately after saving—regardless of how the RDL is defined. This creates functional inconsistencies and makes it extremely difficult to manage subscription behavior across so many migrated reports.
Because of the scale of our environment, modifying each report or redesigning parameter patterns is not feasible.
Could you please clarify:
- Is this issue fixed in the September 2025 release or any more recent PBIRS release?
- If not, is this behavior planned to be fixed in an upcoming release?
This subscription behavior worked reliably in SharePoint Integrated Mode, so we want to understand whether PBIRS will eventually bring parity, especially for enterprises with large SSRS workloads.
Thank you again for your support—we appreciate any additional guidance you can provide.
Hi mohanmoni1,
Thanks for the follow-up question.Thank you for providing the additional migration context that clarification is very important. You are right that in SSRS SharePoint Integrated Mode, subscriptions reliably respected report-level default parameter values, including the long-established pattern where a NULL default represents ALL. In Power BI Report Server (PBIRS), subscription handling was redesigned, and parameters are currently stored as explicit values at the time the subscription is saved, rather than re-evaluating the report’s default definitions at execution time. This architectural difference explains why subscriptions now normalize “Use default value” to “Leave NULL,” even when the RDL itself has not changed, and why this behaviour becomes especially disruptive in large, migrated SSRS environments.
At present, there is no public confirmation that this behaviour has been changed or fixed in the September 2025 PBIRS release or any later release, and we don’t have visibility into a committed timeline for restoring full parity with SharePoint Integrated Mode for this scenario. This is understood as a platform behaviour difference rather than a report-specific issue, and we recognize the operational impact it has at enterprise scale.
Hope that clarifies. Let us know if you have any doubts regarding this. We will be happy to help.
Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
Hi mohanmoni1,
Just wanted to follow up. If the shared guidance worked for you, that’s wonderful hopefully it also helps others looking for similar answers. If there’s anything else you'd like to explore or clarify, don’t hesitate to reach out.Thank you.
Hi mohanmoni1,
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.Thank you for the detailed explanation and for sharing the troubleshooting steps you have already tried that was very helpful. Based on your description, the behaviour you are seeing aligns with how Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) paginated report subscriptions currently handle report parameters. Subscriptions store parameter values as explicit values at the time the subscription is saved and do not re-evaluate the report’s default parameter definitions during execution. Because of this design, the option “Use default value” is not reliably preserved in subscriptions, particularly when the report default is NULL. In such cases, PBIRS normalizes the value and shows it as “Leave NULL” after saving.
Recreating the subscription, editing it, or re-uploading the RDL will not change this behaviour, as it is related to how subscription metadata is handled rather than the report itself. The supported and recommended approach is to handle default or “ALL” logic within the dataset query, for example by interpreting NULL values in SQL or DAX, or by using an explicit sentinel value such as -1 or 'ALL'. This ensures consistent behaviour both when running the report interactively and when it’s executed via a scheduled subscription. For additional context, other users have reported similar behaviour with paginated report parameters and subscriptions in the Microsoft Fabric Community:
https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Issues/Subscriptions-to-Paginated-Reports-are-losing-Parameters-and/idi-p/2820454Also please checked this solved thread: https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Developer/Issue-with-Paginated-Report-Parameter-Defaulting-to-NULL/m-p/4311692
Hope that clarifies. Let us know if you have any doubts regarding this. We will be happy to help.
Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
