Unable to publish Report since November 2020 Release overnight

[Anonymous]

Good morning,

Is anyone else having issues publishing their Power BI reports to the service since the November 2020 Desktop (2.87.684.0 64-bit) release overnight?

James

[tuannie · Accepted solution]

There is an option in File > Options and settings > Options > Security > "Enable certificate revocation check". Can you try disable/uncheck that option and sign in again?

Please let us know if that fixes the issue.

[tuannie]

Hi @Anonymous, we have released a new version for November that rolled back the new SSL certificate enforcement. We are working on giving more UI options for users and admins to control this setting as well as writing up documentation. All these changes will probably come in the February release of PBI Desktop (but the timeline may change).

[tuannie]

We're releasing a new version of November release (it should be available either today or tomorrow). This new version will revert the new SSL certificate hardening so we have more time to provide guidance/documentation for upgrading SSL certificates and your system/network admins have more time to upgrade. Please note that the SSL certificate upgrade will most likely be done by your system/network admin.

A bit more technical information, the recent PBI Desktop change requires all SSL certificates to have a "certificate revocation list" (CRL). In short, the CRL allows PBI Desktop to verify that the certificate is still valid. All Microsoft issued certificates are compliant. The scenario where you most likely run into issue is corporate proxy. If your organization has a corporate proxy and the SSL certificates used by the proxy (these certificats are internal to the organization) don't have CRLs, then PBI Desktop will reject them.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response, @tuannie - although it would be preferable to get some warning before implementing such a breaking change in future. 

I'm happy to work with you on testing this out if that is of any benefit.  

[tuannie]

@Anonymous  really appreciate the offer. We're working on some documentations, so I'll update this thread when we have them. And it'll be great to get some feedback on whether the documentations help.

[Anonymous]

Hi @tuannie,

Has there been any development on this?

[Anonymous]

The certs I've been pointed at were https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/tls-certificate-changes
However, adding these root CAs to the server running the On-Premise Data Gateway did not resolve the issues encountered in the November 2020 release.

[cvillegas]

@tuannie Do you have the certs whereby you can at least attach them? I keep seeing that the upgrade of the certs need to be done. This also impacts the Power BI Gateway as well.

[vmucchielli]

Thanks, we had the same issue within our organization. Please keep us posted when the doc is ready. Upgrade of SSL certificate might take a long time in a large company

[tuannie]

We're working on providing guidelines for upgrading SSL certificates (this is something that need to be done by system/network admins). I'll update this thread when we have documentations.

[Anonymous]

How can this be released without having the steps or required documentation on how to handle the SSL certification in place ? This is causing lot of confusion and unnecessary workarounds.

[tuannie · Accepted solution]

Here is a bit more context on this issue. Starting in the November 2020 release, PBI Desktop will harden requirements for SSL certificates (see the "Certificate revocation check for web connections" section in https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-november-2020-feature-summary/#_Toc55467058). This will require some organizations to upgrade their current SSL certificates. This is done to ensure more secured communications between PBI Desktop and PBI Service.

We will update with more documentations on how to upgrade SSL certificates. In the meantime, the workaround is to temporarily disable the option

File > Options and settings > Options > Security > "Enable certificate revocation check"

[roselilly23]

We were also having problems connecting to our azure analysis services tabular models due to the update, however, the workaround solved this too. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks @tuannie for the update. I can confirm the workaround has worked for me. Do you have an approximate timescale for the release of the SSL certificates documentation?

[tuannie · Accepted solution]

There is an option in File > Options and settings > Options > Security > "Enable certificate revocation check". Can you try disable/uncheck that option and sign in again?

Please let us know if that fixes the issue.

[pacofq]

This did fix my problem to! Thanks so much!

[Anonymous]

That fixed it for me -- THANKS!

[dsdesrosiers]

Ditto here - ...frustrating to say the least. 

[Anonymous]

Has anyone gotten any information regarding this? We have a few users who cannot sign in via the November 2020 PBI Desktop too. 

[ibarrau]

That's really strange because I can't find any reference to november. Even documentation when clicking on "last update" sends me to october documentation. You can try even older:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/desktop-latest-update-archive

Regards,

[Anonymous]

I am having a similar issue -- cannot sign into DESKTOP so I cannot publish.