No Gateway

[WhiteBusLady]

After all I've read about how simple OneDrive hourly refreshes are, and all I've learned about self-service PowerQuery data prep with calculated columns and measures, I'm horrified to finally realize I cannot do simple data updates to my fancy reports without a Gateway! 

My client has 3 principals, working from separate coasts.  All company data flows to shared OneDrive folders.  There is no local network.  No server.  No always-on computer.  Isn't that the point of Office 365 and OneDrive?  Is there no way to do a simple daily data update without a server-based Gateway?  What am I missing? 

Is there some way to script something that will accomplish the same thing? 

[edejes2 · Accepted solution]

Hello, 

You can install personal data gateway in your machine and you also need to connect your one drive to your pc as well, them just schedule a refresh on a time the machine will be on. 

Regards!

ED

[WhiteBusLady]

Thank you for the reply.  I had to do some reading....

Superficially, this makes sense if you have a Windows machine that is always online.  I am developing the reports on a Windows laptop, but my presence is temporary.  I will be moving on to other projects.

My client has 3 PBI users geographically separated, no internal network, all using Macs.  They interface with one of their large clients using Office365.  The plan was to use OneDrive and PBI to share daily/weekly reports.  I read that the Gateway runs on Windows.  What about a Mac-based Gateway?  If I was logging in with an Apple machine would I be offered a Mac version?

I downloaded the Gateway softeware and need to do some experimenting before I mark this as solved.  Will be back....

[WhiteBusLady]

This works.  But I still have nowhere to run it.  I am only online now and then.  The office people only have Mac hardware.  We work together through Office 365.

Is there a Mac version of the gateway program?  Either personal or standard?

[Nonsensely]

Hello WhiteBusLady,

I am so feeling your pain!

I spent weeks trying to get a gateway set up on our network, but ended up having to do it on my laptop.  My reports pull from  Oracle DB, SQL Server, Cloud, and iSeries db2 databases.  Could never get the base Oracle or DB2 connections to work, so set them up as ODBC. They work great as long as I'm signed on and my laptop us up and running.  However, every weekend, when my laptop is shutdown, the auto refreshes turn themselves off because they can't connect. So, every Monday, I have to sign on, open EVERY SINGLE published dashboard/report, go into Datasets, Refresh them, and then turn on the Auto Refresh.  There is no option for "weekday" refreshes, just daily.  ARGH!!!!!  Now my Mondays are filled with waiting...... and waiting.....

My users are getting antsy, they love the dashboards/reports, but very much dislike that it's showing stale data when I'm not here. I'm back to trying to create "always up" gateways on one of our servers, but the connections keep puking. SQL errors, pulling data in as binary, authority, etc.   

One of my IT coworkers set up the Power BI Reporting tool, which I guess is fine if only pulling from a spreadsheet on the network, but that one really hates my "many to many" relationships and chokes every time I open it.  We even contracted a MS parter to build gateways for us, but after 2 months of frustration and begging for a status, stopped getting responses from them. All the tutorials show is how to set up one connection, which ALWAYS WORKS in the demo, and import from there.  

Would be nice if there were a clear answer as to why these do not seem to work, rather than having to spend entire days trying (and failing) using suggestions pulled from the internet. 

[WhiteBusLady]

Thanks for the empathy!  And a possible small solution for you regarding your statement " There is no option for "weekday" refreshes, just daily".  This isn't true.  I'm still in Trial and Error learning stage, so it took me a while to realize this.  The Schedule Refresh settings in the Service work like SQL Server schedule settings.  If you select Weekly, you can then check individual days of the week.  For a given dataset, click Schedule Refresh.  Turn it on.  Immediately below the On button is the Refresh Frequency dropdown.  Set it to Weekly.  Checkboxes for each day of the week appear.  Uncheck Saturday, Sunday.  If you need 4 times per day, set up 4 schedules, one for 7am, one for noon, .... Set each one to run the Weekly schedule, Mon-Fri.  But one will run at 7am, another at noon, etc.

[WhiteBusLady]

WhiteBusLady again:  I just realized PBI may not let you have multiple schedules per report.  SQLServer does.  But if you only need to update once per day my suggestion may still help.

I got lucky, my users like the reports so well they agreed to pay for a cloud server.  We have other uses for it also, and this pushed them over the edge.  But Microsoft licensing is expensive.  No one answered one of my questions:  Is there a Mac version of the gateway?  More important, is there a LINUX version?