Random Refresh Fail

[ArchStanton]

Hi,

Every now and again, or an average 2/3 times a year I am met with several emails at the start of the day notifying me that my PowerBI reports have failed to refresh.

Can anyone explain why this happens? 
These occurence are random and I may not get another incident for several months.

The issue with this unpredictabilty is that If this happened while I was on annual leave then my organisation would have no way of fixing the issue, and so would be stuck in limbo until I returned as I am the sole owner of the reports in Desktop - it is me who publishes them when changes are made to the data model or visuals.

These refresh failures are worrying - is there anything that I or our IT department can do to prevent them happening

The issue is easy to resolve and requires me to 'edit my credentials' which simply involves me selecting my Microsoft account once again:

When I do this, the window below appears and the refresh begins

Can someone explain what is going on, why its happening and is it possible to prevent it happening again?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated!

[MohdZaid_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @ArchStanton  , 

Your refresh failures in Microsoft Power BI are happening because your login token occasionally expires. Power BI uses secure authentication tokens to connect to data sources, and due to security policies in Microsoft Entra ID, these tokens sometimes require re-authentication. When that happens, the scheduled refresh fails until you click “Edit credentials” and sign in again. This is normal security behavior, not a report or data issue.

The real concern is that the refresh is tied to your personal account. If it expires while you're away, no one else can fix it, which creates unnecessary risk for the organisation.

Best Practice: Instead of using a personal account, create a Service Principal (app registration) and use it to authenticate all your data sources. Configure your dataset connections through this Service Principal so authentication is centrally managed and not dependent on an individual user account. This will prevent these recurring refresh failures in the future.

If this solved your issue, please mark it as the solution so others can find it easily.

If it helped, a quick ‌‌ Kudos is always appreciated it helps highlight useful answers for the community.

Thanks for being part of the discussion !!!

[MohdZaid_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @ArchStanton  , 

Your refresh failures in Microsoft Power BI are happening because your login token occasionally expires. Power BI uses secure authentication tokens to connect to data sources, and due to security policies in Microsoft Entra ID, these tokens sometimes require re-authentication. When that happens, the scheduled refresh fails until you click “Edit credentials” and sign in again. This is normal security behavior, not a report or data issue.

The real concern is that the refresh is tied to your personal account. If it expires while you're away, no one else can fix it, which creates unnecessary risk for the organisation.

Best Practice: Instead of using a personal account, create a Service Principal (app registration) and use it to authenticate all your data sources. Configure your dataset connections through this Service Principal so authentication is centrally managed and not dependent on an individual user account. This will prevent these recurring refresh failures in the future.

If this solved your issue, please mark it as the solution so others can find it easily.

If it helped, a quick ‌‌ Kudos is always appreciated it helps highlight useful answers for the community.

Thanks for being part of the discussion !!!

[ArchStanton]

Thanks, I'm going to speak to the relevant people about this and propose your suggestion.
Will I still be able to own the peort and publish it my from account or would that set-up need to be changed?

[MohdZaid_ · Accepted solution]

Yes, you will continue to own and publish the report just as you do now. The only change is that for data source authentication, you will use the Service Principal credentials (username and password), which will be provided to you by your IT team.


Mark as Solution if this is usefull.

[ArchStanton]

Many thanks for your help!

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @ArchStanton , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

This is a periodic OAuth credential expiry issue in Power BI Service, not a problem with the report, model or refresh schedule. Tokens tied to a user account are long-lived but not permanent and can be invalidated by normal Entra ID security lifecycle events (such as policy revalidation, MFA/session resets or token aging). Because the dataset is authenticated using a personal account, refresh depends on that sign-in context, so when the token expires or is revoked, scheduled refresh fails until credentials are re-authenticated.

Troubleshoot refresh scenarios - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

[ArchStanton]

Hi, I have received a solution to my question from one of your colleagues so no need to reply!

[ArchStanton]

Thank you for your response, that all makes sense.

I am the sole person responsible for these PowerBI reports in my organisation - what would you suggest we could do to mitigate a scenario where I'm away and this happens?

Would it be possible to have a set-up where its not my own personal credentials that are linked to the reports and therefore a group of selected individuals (possibly our IT Dept) could re-authenticate the token?

[MohdZaid_]

Yes, 

I recommend using a Service Principal (app registration) instead of your personal account. This is the most effective way to mitigate this scenario.

By doing this, all your Power BI data sources can authenticate through the Service Principal rather than an individual user. You would configure your dataset connections to use this Service Principal, which means:

• Authentication is centrally managed.
• The reports are not dependent on a single person’s credentials.
• A selected group (e.g., your IT department) can manage or re-authenticate the token if needed, without needing access to your personal account.
• It significantly reduces the risk of refresh failures when you are away.

This setup ensures continuity and stability of your Power BI reports, even if the primary author is unavailable.

If this solved your issue, please mark it as the solution so others can find it easily.

If it helped, a quick ‌‌ Kudos is always appreciated it helps highlight useful answers for the community.

Thanks for being part of the discussion !!!