PowerBi Report Server scheduled refresh authentication

[SteveChristian]

We have PowerBI Report Server May 2021 on a 2016 server and PowerBI Desktop RS published.
A user is trying to configure scheduled model refresh for connection to a SQL Server hosted on an Azure hosted server in another area of the business. However having an issue when selecting the Credentials to connect to the data source.

They report using the Desktop RS version they have the option to Select a Microsoft Account from the authentication options then can enter their details and connect ok. However when trying this on the report server they have no option to select a Microsoft account, only Windows or Basic Authentication. Therefore cannot set up the model refresh.

Reading article below I wonder if this is because 'PowerBI Report server does not support OAuth based authentication for model refresh'.

Power BI report data sources in Power BI Report Server - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

I am not an expert in PowerBI or Azure authentication so any help appreciated.

[v-xiaoyan-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @SteveChristian ,

Not all Power BI Reports can have a scheduled refresh plan created on them. The following is a list of Power BI Reports that you Can't create a scheduled refresh plan.

• Your report contains one or more Analysis Services data sources, which use a live connection.
• Your report contains one or more data sources, which use DirectQuery.
• Your report does not contain any data source. For example, data is manually entered via Enter Data or a report contains only static content like images, text, etc.
• Your report contains dynamic data sources. For example, data from the report is used to dynamicaly build the name of a server, the name of a database, or a URL address to fetch contents. Only data sources that are detected when the report was uploaded can be refreshed.

In addition to the above list, there are specific scenarios with data sources in import mode, for which you cannot create refresh plans.

• If a File or Folder data source is used and the file path is a local path (e.g. C:\Users\user\Documents), then a refresh plan cannot be created. The path must be a path the report server can connect to like a network share. For example, \myshare\Documents.
• If data source can be connected using only OAuth (e.g. Facebook, Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.), then cache refresh plan cannot be created. At the moment, RS does not support OAuth authentication for any data source whether it is for paginated, mobile or Power BI reports.

Hope it helps,

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Caitlyn

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