Multifactor Authentication vs. PowerBI Service Auto Refresh

[TonyL507]

Hello,

We have a few dozen PowerBI reports in the service, mainly under a PowerBI PRO license. The Reports are connected to three sources: Dynamics 365 (via Odata), Sharepoint, or the web.

The refresh is configured by the dataset owner, who is a business user. We recently turned on MFA for that user (via text message code) and found that we had to go in and reauthenticate nearly all connections within every dataset/dataflow. The MFA configuration requires re-authentication every ten days.

What are folks doing to keep PowerBI connected when MFA is required? Are they using service accounts without MFA enabled? Are there other options to keep MFA on but not re-authenticate every ten days to keep the refreshes rolling?

[TonyL507]

Thank you for the feedback, Ibendlin.

That is what I was fearing... For PowerBI.com to refresh in an automated manner, the user account used should avoid multi-factor unless you want to re-authenticate every connection once and a while.

Does anyone else have any experience with this by chance?

[lbendlin]

We see similar issues. The only option is to use accounts that explicitly do not use MFA.