Data Refresh in Service doesn't work but Desktop Does

[keobrie]

This question is extremely simple and I'm sure its just that I've never done this before.  I have a series of Power BI reports that I built using Power BI Desktop.  The data model consists of two files refreshed from URLs:

AzureBlob{"url":"https://usafactsstatic.blob.core.windows.net/public/data/covid-19/covid_confirmed_usafacts.csv"}
AzureBlob{"url":"https://usafactsstatic.blob.core.windows.net/public/data/covid-19/covid_deaths_usafacts.csv"}

Then, I innocently imported about 5 CSV files from my local machine to provide reference table lookups (convert zip codes, State names, etc. ... pretty basic stuff).  I unchecked "Include in report refresh" on all the local CSV files because they don't change.  The desktop has been refreshing the two URL based CSVs above without a problem.  

I've published the reports to the Power BI Service (Power BI Pro) with the intent to have the data automatically refresh daily on an unattended basis.  This set of reports were more of a hobby but I like having the ability to show the reports on my mobile devices from time to time.

Anyway, the dataset won't refresh in the service.  Its prompting me for a Gateway which shouldn't be necessary for the URL's above.  I don't want to go back and rebuild everything from scratch but I will if necessary.

I just tested a "dataset only" deployment stripping out all of the visualizations and removing all of the data sources other than the two above.  Once published, I was prompted for credentials, set the credentials to anonymous and the Privacy Level to "none" and the dataset appears to be functioning properly.

Can somebody tell me what I did wrong and how I should do this to have it work properly (ie. update the two URL based CSVs on an unattended basis in the service).

[v-xiaoyan-msft]

Hi@keobrie ，

It's pleasant if your problem has been solved, could you please mark the reply as Answered? that way, other community members will easily find the solution when they get the same issue.

Hope it helps.

Best Regards,
Caitlyn Yan

If this post helps then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

HI @keobrie 

The reason is because you imported the CSV files, Power BI wants to refresh those same CSV files.

What you can do as a workaround is instead of importing the CSV files, click on ENTER Data and copy and paste the contents from your CSV files into the ENTER data screen.

By doing this, no data is actually imported from a CSV file, but rather pasted into your Power BI desktop file.