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remmypocco's avatar
remmypocco
Frequent Visitor
6 months ago
Solved

dataflow gen1

  Hi everyone, I’m facing an issue with Dataflow Gen1 in the Power BI Service related to privacy levels, and I’d appreciate some guidance. Background I built a report in Power BI Desktop All...
Dataflow
  • v-karpurapud's avatar
    v-karpurapud
    6 months ago

    Hi remmypocco 
    Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric community forum.
     

    In Dataflow Gen1, this behavior is expected due to how Power Query Online handles data-source privacy. Even if all tables are from the same SharePoint site with identical URLs, credentials, and an Organizational privacy level, the online engine treats each entity in the dataflow as a separate data-source instance.
     

    When you edit the dataflow and perform merge or append operations, Power Query Online re-applies privacy rules at edit time and interprets the operation as combining multiple sources. This privacy check does not happen during scheduled refresh, which is why refresh works with the validated mashup while editing can fail with a privacy error.
     

    Unlike Power BI Desktop, Dataflow Gen1 does not inherit the “Ignore Privacy Levels” option and does not always provide privacy settings in the Service. Because of this, Gen1 cannot reliably support merges across multiple entities, even when they use the same SharePoint site and matching credentials and privacy levels.

     

    With a standard star schema using separate fact and dimension tables, this is a known architectural limitation of Dataflow Gen1 rather than a configuration problem. The main options are to keep all merge logic in a single query chain with one SharePoint connection (which may not be practical for dimensional models), move merge and ID-generation to Power BI Desktop and use Gen1 dataflows only for ingestion, or migrate to Dataflows Gen2, which has a modern engine and consistent privacy handling.
     

    I hope this helps. If you have more questions, feel free to ask and we’ll be glad to assist further.

     

    Best Regards,

    Microsoft Fabric Community Support Team.
     

SaiTejaTalasila's avatar
SaiTejaTalasila
Super User
6 months ago

Hi remmypocco ,

 

This occurs due to how the Power Query Data Privacy Firewall is enforced in Power BI Service for Dataflow Gen1, not because of an incorrect privacy configuration.

 

Even when all sources use the same SharePoint site URL and all queries are set to Organizational, the Service enforces the firewall strictly. When editing tables in the Service, Power Query re-evaluates query boundaries and detects cross-query or cross-partition dependencies (such as query references, reused functions, or staging queries). This is treated as combining data from multiple sources and is therefore blocked.

 

Unlike Power BI Desktop, Dataflow Gen1 in the Service does not support “Ignore privacy levels”, and the firewall cannot be disabled. As a result, the error typically appears when clicking Save, even if the dataflow refreshed successfully before.

 

This is a known limitation of Dataflow Gen1, documented under the Power Query Data Privacy Firewall behavior:

https://learn.microsoft.com/power-query/data-privacy-firewall

 

Thanks,

Sai Teja