Forum Discussion
Adding a SharePoint data source with a service principal
Hi,
I am trying to access files located in SharePoint Online. We would like to use a service principal for the authentication. But when I try to save the credentials I get the following error:
Service principal error
Unable to update connection credentials.
Invalid connection credentials.
Details:
The credentials provided for the SharePoint source are invalid. (Source at https://mytenant.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite.)
This is what I enter in the data source
sharePointSiteURL: https://mytenant.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite
Authentication method: Service principal
Tenant ID: My tenant ID
Service Principle ID: The Application (client) ID from the Entra ID App registration
Service principle key: The value of the secret I created for the Entra ID App registration
The Entra ID App registration has the following API permissions
The service principal (Entra ID app) has Read permissions on the SharePoint site
What is it I am missing in order to get this to work 🙂 ?
Regards Erik
18 Replies
Hey,
Setting the property "DisableCustomAppAuthentication" in your SharePoint tenant to "false" is doing the trick, you can use the following PS command :
Set-SPOTenant -DisableCustomAppAuthentication $falseThe problem is that since November 27th, 2023 (depreication of Azure Access Control Services) this is set to "true" by default even though it's still working until April 2, 2026. The currently only (recommended) way is to use certificate-based OAuth2.0 authentication which won't work in the Power BI service though as it requires a local certificate to be integrated, seems to be kind of a technical debt the Power BI team has yet to address.
Hope this helps.
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Data Management | Data Analytics & Reporting | Data Apps & APIs | Artificial Intelligence | EU ProjectsHi Anonymous,
Thank you for getting back to me!
It would be appreciated if you could come back to me no matter what info you get in the internal ticket you created.
I guess it could be an issue with Power BI.
But it could also be that there is something I have done wrong. If that is the case I would like some guidance on what I have to do in order to get it to work.
Just for your information. I found the below thread which sounds like a similiar issue I have.
Regards Erik
Hi Anonymous - We are facing a similar issue when trying to connect to a Sharepoint Online list from PowerBI Online using service principal as the authentication method. Wondering if you have got any guidance from your internal team
Service Principle ID: The Application (client) ID from the Entra ID App registration,
You need Object ID for the SP ID. Not Application ID.Hi zhangjoe,
When we change from Application (client) ID to Object ID we got another error:
Any idea what might cause this?
Did you find a solution to this? I'm facing the same issue
Still no news? This problem is getting really annoying.
Hello,
did you find a solution for this ? I habe now the same issue with the same error message. I tried also to create a Ticket but it was closed with the message Microsoft has no ressources and i sould contact a partner.
Having the same issue. This is our first time setting up a Service Principal to access SharePoint sites in Power BI, and I'm glad I found this thread because it seems like we're not the only ones having issues.
Did you find a solution to this issue? I could connect to sharepoint lists and get the data, but not excel files in document libraries!
Any update ?
Hello,
Is there a solution for this topic?
I am also getting an error (error 400 : the credentials are invalid) while trying to use a principal service to authenticate a semantic model (with a Sharepoint site).
Thanks in advance.
I'm facing the exact same problem. Are there any news or tips on this?
