Orphaned Deployment Pipeline? Owning User Deleted - No Way to Edit Deployment Pipeline

[AnonymousPerson]

Hello,

I just became Power BI global admin in my tenant.

The previous admin was owner of 2 deployment pipelines. These were not shared.

The old admin user was deleted and cannot be recovered.

I tried to create a new Deployment Pipeline, but Power BI will not let me add any workspaces because it thinks they are alreay part of this orphaned Deployment Pipeline.  

Is there any way, even as a global admin, to edit Deployment Pipelines that you do not own?  

[hugosilvasilva]

Hi @AnonymousPerson ,

As there is no feature at Power BI Portal Administration to deal with this situation, I decided to document the workaround Microsoft support team sent to me. It's available at: https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Define-new-admin-to-orphan-deployment-pipeline/m-p.... 

If it works for you, please consider mark this as solution. 

[Nimrod_Shalit]

@dbeavon3 ,

There's an admin API that solves this problem for more than a year now- Admin - Pipelines UpdateUserAsAdmin - REST API (Power BI Power BI REST APIs) | Microsoft Learn

You can also get all pipelines and users through these APIs:

• Admin - Pipelines GetPipelinesAsAdmin - REST API (Power BI Power BI REST APIs) | Microsoft Learn
• Admin - Pipelines GetPipelineUsersAsAdmin - REST API (Power BI Power BI REST APIs) | Microsoft Learn

[dbeavon3]

@Nimrod_Shalit Are you referring to an API that requires full admin access to the entire power bi tenant?

This isn't quite what I was looking for.  Most workspace admins are not power BI admins. 

I was asking for a way to fix a single workspace.  IE. if a workspace-administrator has created a pipeline and attached it to his workspace, then any other workspace-administrator, for the same workspace, should be able to undo that same operation (ie. by detaching that pipeline so the workspace is free to be referenced from a different pipeline) 

Whenever we use pipelines today, they are just for temporary purposes, to quickly copy something from one place to another (without impacting the target by changing its gateway settings, refresh schedule, permissions, etc).  The pipeline is just a means to an end.  It needs to be removed after it's purpose is completed.  However if the workspace-admin who creates the pipeline doesn't remember to clean up after themselves, then another workspace-admin should be able to the clean-up at a later time.  It seems obvious that a workspace admin should be able to detach pipelines, but does not appear to be possible today...

[Nimrod_Shalit · Accepted solution]

@AnonymousPerson,

We don't have any direct way to take over an orphaned deployment pipeline.

We will add an admin API so he can add himself/ others to an orphaned pipeline.

Until then, please open a support ticket with the details of the pipelines, and the operation you wish to do-

1. delete the pipelines (which will free up the WSs to be assigned to new pipelines)

2. add a user to the pipelines, so he can become admin.

[dbeavon3]

@Nimrod_Shalit 

Is there any word on this?  We need to clean up pipelines.  An admin of any workspace should be able to detach these silly things, and free up the workspace.

This Power BI problem is two years old.  It would be very nice if the daily use of pipelines didn't involve calling your Power BI support team.  I'm not sure how that crazy decision got passed QA.