Forum Discussion
Updates to the Web connector
We are currently working on improving the refresh of cloud based data sources. As part of this, one of the changes we have made recently is that new datasets that leverage import from Web pages will not be automatically configured for refresh in Power BI service, and will require the use of a gateway. Please consider using the Personal Gateway or On-Premises data gateway if you would like to use this capability. We are working on removing this restriction in the future.
Thanks,
The Power BI team
70 Replies
This is terrible news! I've developed Power BI reports that are customer facing, which use data from a web page source. Suddenly without notice, Microsoft pull this feature. This is the exact reason I am finding it difficult to gain support within our business for Microsoft's online services.
Regardless, I trust you are working to provide an alternative solution that will allow for reports to schedule data refreshes from Web Page sources without having to use a gateway running on a local computer.
matmoore wrote:Suddenly without notice, Microsoft pull this feature. This is the exact reason I am finding it difficult to gain support within our business for Microsoft's online services.
Exactly this! Very difficult to get our management behind the switch to PBI when refresh is this unreliable.
I'm sorry you're having difficulties. As I mentioned we're working on improving this in the future. But meanwhile, are you able to use the Power BI gateway to keep your new reports working? To be clear, this is impacting only new reports, if you have an existing report running, it will not have any impact on it.
Regarding gaining support from your company, were you seeing any other issues in Power BI that we can help with? If so, please send me an email to dimazaid.at.microsoft.com and I'll be more than happy to go thru them.Thanks!
Dimah- dimazaid,
This is a report that was published, then updated recently using the latest version of Power BI desktop and republished.
I'm all for future improvements, but breaking key features (and scheduled sync of online web page data sources is a huge one) before having the improvement ready is extremely poor form for a product targeted at business intelligence. Our business pays Microsoft for a cloud service, which means we expect not to have to run an application on a local server to feed data from a webpage to Power BI online which defeats the purpose of our subscription.
The technical support provided by Microsoft to date has been to use a Personal Gateway (not acceptable as I'd need a computer running when the refresh is scheduled) or alternatively use the workaround in this post by using Google Sheets (even worse, a competitors product)!
Will scheduled refresh of web.page data sources be supported by the "improvement" the Power BI team is working on?
Has anyone figured out how to use the on-premises gateway instead of the personal gateway to schedule synchronisation of web data sources?
I'm fed up with my scheduled sync failing due to my personal gateway (running on my laptop) being unavailable (i.e. my computer being turned off) just to pull data from a website into PBI online...
Hi Matmoore,
I had the same problem and the response from Microsoft was to vote for that feature (see http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Integrations-with-Files-and/On-premises-data-gateway-OData-OAuth2/m-p/101069#M7093).
In short, the Gateway takes over all sources on-prem AND online BUT at the movement this is not supported, so you must add the Personal Gateway to enable the combination of on-prem and online sources.
Response from Microsoft
"In addition, I mean that your issue is caused by that on-premises gateway doesn't allow to combine on-premises data source and online data source in a single dataset."
This is such a crazy architecture and doesn't make any sense;
- First, why does the Gateway take over all sources and not just the on-prem sources?
- Why can I add online sources to the Data Gateway (manage gateways) if this feature is not supported?
- And even if the Data Gateway did support online sources, why are the connectors and authentication options limited compared to Power BI Desktop?
I hope Microsoft will rethink the backend architecture - at the movement it is too unstable and too confusing :(
Does this mean if I have used URL as a datasource, then in powerBI service, I cannot use schedule refresh to connect directly and I need to have a gateway which will be used to load data from the URL?
Jepp.
dimazaid I spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn't refresh my web-data sources without a gateway, because the official documentation still says the gateway is not needed.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-personal-gateway/
But I am still able to refresh some of the new datasets without gateway where I have used Web as datasource.
Hey everyone,
I managed to get Google Sheets to work instead for another document (more like, it hasn't given me an error yet..) based on some other searching on the internet so not entirely my own discovery:
- In Google API Console, enable Sheets API
- Under "Credentials", create "OAuth Client ID". Copy the "Client ID" and "Client Secret". (This will be your username and password for "Web credentials")
- In your Google Sheet, go to "File > Publish to the Web", select Excel as the file format, copy the url.
- In Power BI Desktop, use "Web" as a source, and use the Publish to Web url, use Basic as the credential type, and use the Client ID and Client Secret as username and password.
- On the Scheduled refresh page on PowerBI.com, you will need to re-enter these again.
good luck
-Kevin
After changing to web credentials and it's saying that my dashboards need a PowerBI Pro account, even though I created them with a free account. It also said that the (web) refresh failed because "The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine." Wouldn't the 'local machine' in this case be the web service? In any case I cannot fuss around with web access any more and rather do a manual refresh that works reliably.
Not sure how you are defining old and new, but I'm guessing new as it's a new location from the last? In any case I have lost track, and as mentioned I will keep using what I know works, because Murphy's law I won't be able to troubleshoot it in time before a meeting or something.
I keep reading about this possibility to use the personal gateway to connect to web sources but all I get in my schedule report section is:
Where am I supposed to choose that option?
Perhaps there are multiple issues with the Web connector and the support team is getting them mixed up.we have provided a Pass4surekey 70-412 100% real exam dumps.You can easily pass through our first attempet of Pdf Braindumps.
@dimazaid Thansk Dima, its working now. But unable to schedule refersh for the report. it is saying it is "connecting directly" and and is asking for "windows" credentials. But since it is SP onprem, shouldnt it use a gateway?
How do i set up refersh using a gateway?
Hi,
Any updates?
I can successfully publish and schedule refresh for Excel file stores in One Drive For Business and also can schedule the refresh for SQL Server on-prem queries.... BUT - not if both (the One Drive for Business and SQL query) are in the same model.
PowerBI Destop works perfectly, but when I publish to service - I have the Gateway error.
But I do have a SQL Server Gateway and it works. I also don't need a gateway for OneDrive for Business Excel file connection
So why they are not working together and hoe to fix this?
Please help...
Thank you
Michael
I just modified the data source for one of my reports to connect it to the OneDrive cloud version of my source Excel file. (Initially I had set it up from a local copy of that source file by mistake.) Now it tells me the report is using Power BI Pro functions? Not sure what the issue is since I've connected to "web" sources in this way on other reports within the past week without issue.
