How do I reuse a gateway connection between my reports?

[agneum]

Right now, every time a we need to map some on-prem data to dataset (to our gateway in app.powerbi.com) we have to create an entirely new connection in the gateway, even though there are something like 20 existing connections with the exact same credential and connection string.

When "mapping" it is simply not allowed to choose between existing connections. It clutters everything, and is very annoying , and a nightmare if say, the database credential is changed.

[ibarrau]

Hi. I haven't seen this before. However I think I can say something that might help. In order to make different Pbix files with same source take one source of the configured in the Gateway. All sources must be configured exactly with the same string. You can't miss a "," or anything. If you use a port in one and not another, then it's a different connection. If you use IP in one and alias in another it's a different connection.

Be sure that your Power Query code in the datasets are the same, SQL Server e.g:

Source = Sql.Database("[server instance]", "[database]")

You can check it in Power Bi Desktop under Data Sources settings. If you load a lot of tables from same source you should only see one source with the previous name.

If all files are like that, you should only configure the gateway source once. It might sounds like obvious but believe me when I say "check the files again".

I hope this helps,