Enterprise Gateway requires Server Admin role for SSAS connections, Personal Gateway does not

[slingy_]

This is stupid:

It works fine with a Personal Gateway, but doesn't work with an Enterprise Gateway.
From a bit of searching it appears that admin role is required for the server/database, but a normal read-only user role is fine for the Personal Gateway.
Why is it like this?
I work for a company that is too large to go around granting admin rights to everyone who needs to refresh a dataset, why can't the "Discover Method" be added to a read-only role when it really just exists to read cube metadata anyway?
Why is that method required for an Enterprise Gateway anyway when a Personal Gateway is fine without it?
Does anything in this world make sense?

[v-diye-msft]

Hi @slingy_ 

Your root request is make sure others can refresh the AS report in service, but without the AS admin role. right?

Actually, it's no need to add them as role in the AS, you should only ensure that the report owner can refresh it smoothly in the service, and share the report to others in the workspace. Others can refresh the report using your gateway as long as they are added in the worksapce as a role.  But please note that you need map the user to the account which can refresh the datasource successfully.

[slingy_]

"Your root request is make sure others can refresh the AS report in service, but without the AS admin role. right?"
No, I want to be able to refresh it.

SSAS is managed by a partner IT company, they do not have any access to our Power BI workspaces or anything like that. We also cannot get them to use their Server Admin credentials to refresh the SSAS cube connections in our datasets.

1:- I own/manage the report, dataset and (Premium) workspace 
2:- I can refresh the dataset fine in Power BI desktop
3:- I can refresh the dataset in the Power BI service with an On-Premises Gateway (Personal).

But the problem here is
4:- I cannot refresh the report using an On-Premises Gateway (Enterprise), even though I'm using the same credentials for the SSAS data source as I'm using in Desktop and Personal Gateway.
The error is due to the lack of "Discover method" (or read metadata or whatever) permissions in a non-Server Admin role for SSAS and I'm not sure why it's required for an enterprise gateway and not a personal gateway.

There are many reasons why a dataset refresh using a personal gateway or manual via PBI Desktop is not suitable in this case, so that is not an option.

[amitchandak]

@slingy_ , refer if this can help

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Cannot-create-new-enterprise-gateway-data-source-to-SSAS-se...

[slingy_]

Yeah, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. Seems like there's no solution apart from being granted Admin role to the SSAS server, which is not useful at all.
Users shouldn't need to be admins to access data.