Hi again, we're on a Pro licence, and I raised a ticket, which after some discussion and diagnostics, has been answered by Microsoft Support as follows:
"I wanted to share some insights regarding intermittent issues we've observed while editing dataflows in Power BI Pro, particularly the Error 500 accompanied by a NullReferenceException in backend traces.
As all workspaces in Power BI Pro operate on shared capacity, meaning compute and memory resources are shared across multiple tenants. When a dataflow is edited, Power BI initiates a metadata rendering session and loads the model into memory. If the shared capacity is under heavy load, these sessions can fail intermittently, resulting in the error mentioned above.
Importantly, this is not a user error but rather a backend instability. These failures are non-deterministic and can affect different dataflows at different times.
Recommended Actions:
- Avoid Editing During Peak Hours: Try scheduling edits during off-peak times to reduce the likelihood of encountering these issues.
- Retry in Incognito Mode or After a Delay: This helps clear session state and bypass cached metadata, which can sometimes cause problems.
- Consider Migrating to Gen2 Dataflows: Gen1 dataflows have known limitations in error handling and diagnostics. Gen2 offers improved performance, reliability, and better support from Microsoft.
"
I have responded asking them if Gen2 Dataflows are available under Pro licence as I'm led to believe they're only available in Fabric or Premium licences, therefore not a valid solution for us.
