Semantic Model shows data in Desktop but empty after Service refresh

Thank you all for your valuable inputs which help me analyse the issue more deeper.

I have seen this exact behavior a few times and it almost always comes down to one of two things.

First, check Row Level Security. If any RLS roles are defined and the viewing account is not mapped to a role that returns rows, visuals will look empty even though the refresh succeeded. In the Service, open the dataset, go to Security, confirm your account is in a role, and use Test as role to verify the role's filter actually returns data.

Second, verify the gateway data source. Open Settings on the dataset, expand Data source credentials and Gateway connection, and confirm the connection is mapped to the same database and server you are pointing to in Desktop. A common pattern is the Service ending up bound to a Dev or empty environment while Desktop still reads from Prod.

If both of those check out, also look at any dynamic M parameters or RangeStart and RangeEnd if you have incremental refresh, since a stale or unset value can produce a successful but empty refresh window.

If this helped, a thumbs up and accepting the solution would be appreciated.

Best,
Shai Karmani

Hi csvj_18 

One other thing to check is once the semantic model has been refreshed successfully, if you try and create a report of the semantic model, can you see the tables and columns? If you can what it then means is as mentioned above, it's potentially data not coming into the model that is an issue. So the refresh is refreshing successfully, it's just the source that it is using does not have any data.

Hi csvj_18 

Has anyone encountered a similar issue where data is available locally but not after Service refresh?

Yes. Model works correctly in Power BI Desktop because Desktop uses local credentials while service uses different authentication, gateway, parameter and security settings during refresh.

What are the common root causes for this behavior in Fabric / Power BI Service?

Typical causes include incorrect gateway, privacy level conflicts, Row-Level Security filtering out all rows, parameter values changing after publish, incremental refresh partitions excluding data, unsupported query folding in the service.

Are there recommended diagnostic steps or best practices to identify and fix this issue?

Validate data source credentials and gateway mapping in Power BI Service then compare parameter values between Desktop and Service if you are using it. As a test disable RLS and incremental refresh to isolate issue and check refresh history along with dataset row counts. It also helps to test with a table whether specific transformation or source is causing problem

I think svc is taking the zero‑window branch when ur M‑logic re‑evals under svc‑creds + RangeStart/End, so the refresh looks fine but lands on no rows… just open Dataset → Settings → Parameters and nudge RangeStart/End once—it forces a clean partition rebuild.

Hi csvj_18,

I would also take a moment to thank Shai_Karmani  , Kagiyama_yutaka  for actively participating in the community forum and for the solutions you’ve been sharing in the community forum. Your contributions make a real difference.
 

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Community Support Team.