Is it possible to have a service account own subscriptions and reports?

[credit_check]

Hi Community.

We recently encountered an issue where a couple of daily subscriptions weren't distributed as expected, after the owner of the related report left the company and their account was disabled, which also caused the subscriptions to be disabled automatically.

Is there a way to assign a non-expiring service account as the owner of either the report or the report's subscriptions - ideally both - to avoid this scenario in the future?

Thanks for any help with this.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @credit_check

Report ownership and subscriptions can be managed in Power BI using a service account, which helps avoid disruptions when users leave the company or disable their accounts.

You can try the following steps:

You can change the ownership of a report to a service account by navigating to the workspace where the report is stored, selecting the report, and then assigning the service account as the owner using the Manage Permissions option.

Although the Power BI service interface does not explicitly provide the option to set the service account as the owner of the subscription directly through the UI, you can indirectly make the service account the owner of the subscription by ensuring that it is the owner of the report.

If the report owner cannot be changed immediately, the workspace administrator can take over and manage subscriptions, including subscriptions owned by users who have left the company.

Email subscriptions for reports and dashboards in the Power BI service - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Regards, 

Nono Chen 

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. 

[DKHUghes55]

Hi @credit_check ,

One thing I forgot to mention.  The service account you will need to use is the one that runs the SQL Agent service.

DKHughes55

[credit_check]

@DKHUghes55  thank you for your prompt responses, appreciated.

[DKHUghes55]

Hi @credit_check ,

Yes we use a service account for several of our subscriptions as long as it has access to the sources for the report.  One issue is, if someone opens the subscription for any reason the service clears the user account and password so it will need to be reentered.

Hope that helps.

DKHughes55