Connect to a network folder behind VPN

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm facing a problem with connection to one of local network folder. My enterprise/windows account has access to it and when I'm connected to VPN I have no problem with accessing this folder through windows explorer or Power BI. I use regular folder connector and everything works as normal. But when I disconnect from VPN, I get this error from Power BI:

DataSource.Error: We got the IO error '53' while trying to access the path '\\folder_location\my_excel_file.xlsx"

I want to upload the final report to the PBI Service with automatic data refresh. Do you have any ideas how to resolve this? Maybe I can somehow assign read rights to Powert BI ?(in the same way my account has rights to that folder?)

Thanks in advance!

Grzegorz

[BA_Pete · Accepted solution]

Hi Grzegorz,

This type of thing is what On-Prem Gateways are for.

You should set up a gateway machine on-premises, plugged into your office network, which you can then store credentials on to access the local network and many other data sources.

You set up your local network path as a new data source on the gateway (from within the PBI Service) then, when you publish your report to the PBI Service, you adjust the dataset settings in the Service to use your gateway data source to connect. The gateway will then use the stored credentials to access your network, grab the data, transform it, then send the new dataset to the PBI Service to refresh your report.

It's a fairly large (but not difficult) topic, so I recommend checking out the MS Docs on the subject:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem 

Pete

[Anonymous]

Hi Pete!

Thanks for replay. I've consulted this issue with other people from my organization and yes - that's the way to handle that situation. Thank you!