Scheduling in Power BI Cloud

[rish73]

Hi Gustavo Kath,

I have been able to sucsessfully use the Custom ODATA read data connector in Power BI Desktop. It refreshes perfectly. I can sucesessfully publish to my Workspace and open the report in Power BI Cloud. The issue is when trying to refesh in cloud I get the following error.

Data source error: Unable to refresh the model (id=1504144) because it references an unsupported data source.
Cluster URI: WABI-SOUTH-AFRICA-NORTH-A-PRIMARY-redirect.analysis.windows.net
Activity ID: ff19559e-d0ce-e50b-40f2-2fa36b2f8042
Request ID: f0c5424c-8c8d-3b70-5015-068a566d05cb
Time: 2025-03-26 11:36:30Z

Attached is a screenshot of Power BI Cloud in the Semantic model called Catelog. You can see in the screenshot once the refresh button is clicked there are historical failures to the schedule. I understand this is the correct way to refresh the connection.

Is there something I am doing incorrectly?

Thanks for your help in in advance.

Warm Regards,
Richard d'Abbadie

[gustavokath]

Hi @rish73,

Is the issue still valid? About the PowerBI Cloud integration with the connector when using it with Power BI, there’s an important limitation regarding cloud refresh: Power BI Service (the cloud version) cannot run custom connectors on its own. While you can use custom connectors and refresh them smoothly within Power BI Desktop, refreshing the same dataset in the cloud requires additional configuration.

Specifically, if your SAP Datasphere data source is not publicly accessible or uses a custom authentication method, you must use an data gateway. The gateway acts as a bridge between Power BI Service and your internal data sources. However, it’s not enough to just install the gateway; your custom connector’s .mez file must also be deployed to the gateway machine, and custom connectors must be enabled in its settings. Without this, scheduled and on-demand refreshes through the Power BI Service will fail, often with connectivity or authentication errors.

In summary, custom OData connectors will not refresh in Power BI Service unless a properly-configured gateway is used, and the connector is deployed to it. This is a key difference from Power BI Desktop, where custom connectors work locally without these extra steps. For reliable cloud refreshes of custom OData sources, organizations need to set up their gateway infrastructure accordingly.

Let me know if this helps you
Best Regards
Gustavo Kath