Dataflow Fails in Service, But Works in Editor—Issue with Specific Source at Merge

[tnemeth]

Hi!

I'm building a set of dataflows—one for each KPI/goal at my job. Everything works fine in the Power Query Editor, but when I check the workspace, two of the three dataflows fail with a RequestID/ActivityID error. The common factor is that the two failing dataflows reference some of the same sources, while the one that works does not.

After spending hours investigating, I think I've narrowed it down to a specific source causing the issue, but I can't figure out why it only fails in the service and not the editor. Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

• No logic/boolean calculations before handling nulls.
• No automatically-added error correction steps (like 'replace values' or 'change type').
• Referenced the source in two different ways—both failed:
  • a) Combined/transformed six tables into one in my primary dataflow and merged to that.
  • b) Moved the six tables into their own dataflow (which works fine in both the editor and workspace) and tried merging to that.
• I'm on a PRO space (not Premium).
• The error seems to happen at the merge step, before the expand step.
• Tried different join types (no success).
• Marked primary key columns with the official button.
• Moved everything to the Desktop app, where everything works without errors.

Any ideas what might be wrong? What else should I be looking at to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

HI @tnemeth ,

You might consider checking the following points:

1. Ensure that the credentials set in Power BI Service are correct. You could edit the data source credentials in the Power BI Service to confirm access to the data source.

2. Review the detailed error message to see if you can obtain more specific information to determine the issue.

Best Regards,

Bof

[tnemeth · Accepted solution]

Hi Bof!

Thanks for replying. I took a look at the credentials and ensured they were correct and everything WAS set up fine. But I was hung up on you talking about credentials being specified in the service and so I kept looking for a credential spot OTHER than here:

And then I stumbled across this:

What even brought me here was weirder as far as I'm concerned:

• My FIRST issue w/ DataFlows was data coming from multiple sources and MS Support told me that that just wasn't permitted w/ pro licenses in a pro workspace (True or not I have no idea and don't care)
• Since then, I've been paranoid/adament that I'm just going to keep all data used in ONE source.
• When I clicked on "Manage connections" (To the left of "Options") I saw two sources there
• However... that's impossible. Because my dataflow is literally and definitely only looking at one SharePoint site and nothing else.
• But now I "knew" that the problem was being caused by multiple sources so then when I saw that checkbox in "Options" I thought "Well that clearly won't work"

But it worked. So, anyway, thank you for harping on credentials because in my investigation of that it became clear/obvious what the problem was with the dataflow.

Many cheers!

[YJLi]

This is so helpful, solved my problem that bugs me for a couple days! 

[Anonymous]

Hi @tnemeth ,

Thank you for your feedback,it's very helpful. I'm glad to hear that you resolved the issue.

Best Regards,

Bof