Power BI Pro sharing not working

[AndreDeLange]

Our organization has two Power BI Pro licenses, of which I hold one. Another person is on the trial version of the Pro license. All at the same business, with the same domain name.

I have created a few reports and dashboards and attempted to share it with the other two, but neither of them are able to see anyting. In the case of direct sharing, they get messages saying that the visuals can't be displayed.

In the case of sharing with SharePoint, they get a message saying that the content isn't available.

Why would this be happening? I'm trying to sell Power BI to my boss and this kind of experience really detracts from my ability to make a case for it. He's basically already paying for a service he can't use.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @AndreDeLange

What visuals do you have in your reports?

What is the message that you get when you click on See Details?

What I have seen in the past is if you have created Roles and then not assigned and configured people to those roles. So just ensure that in your Power BI Desktop model that there are no Roles created.

[AndreDeLange]

Hi, thanks for responding. I have not created any roles, all three of us have the same security access to the underlying source data, and I have not enabled RLS.  In case you can't read the message, it says

"HTTP Status Code 401

Activity ID 0b.....long number...a2

Correlation ID f9....another long number...ba

Request ID 4400...another long number...30

Time Mon Jul 31 2017 11:51:17 GMT + 1000 (Tasmania Standard Time)

Version 13.0.1973.165

Cluster URI https://wabi-south-east-asia-redicrect.analysis.windows.net

I have a matrix visual, a word cloud, 5 standard gauge visuals, a drop-down filter and a standard Card.

[GilbertQ]

No problem.

Also are the visuals using Standard Visuals or Custom Visuals?

And also possibly try it in Incognito Mode (Chrome Browser) to ensure that it is not a browser issue. Not something I have seen before.

[AndreDeLange]

The Word Clould visual is a custom, but PBI verified visual. The others are standard visuals.

Ok so I created another report with different data from scratch with only a single Table visual. That actually worked fine.

I then went back to the first report I tried to share, and removed the word cloud, but that didn't solve the problem, ruling out the custom visual as the culprit.

The odd part is that if I send my colleague the source .pbix file, he can open and interact with it, without any issues. Even the custom visuals work. It's only when trying to share from within PBI service or SharePoint that none of the report visuals load.

The report refers to three distinct data source types - one is a common network drive, to which we all have access, another is a SQL database, to which we all have access as well, and the last are a few public web sites that obtain public holiday data. Could it be a case of access permissions that are being overlooked somewhere?

[GilbertQ]

Hi there, do you import all the data into your Power BI Model?

Also what version of Browser are they using?

[AndreDeLange]

Yes, all data used is imported into the model, and they both use Google Chrome, same as me.

[GilbertQ]

Hi there, I looked at the screenshot again and it appears that the one screenshot is from within SharePoint.

Are they able to see the reports when they are shared directly?

And what if you create an App and they get the data via the App?

[AndreDeLange]

So I tried to share the report two ways: Sending direct from the Dashboard and sharing with SharePoint. Neither of the two options worked for sharing the first report, but both methods worked with the second report (containing one simple SQL query with only a table visual).

The two error messages in my first post are screenshots from my colleagues. One from trying to share direct and one from within SharePoint.

I haven't tried building an App, but wouldn't have thought this to be necessary just to get them to see the data, especially because the second, simplified report shared just fine. 

I suspect that there must be an issue with one of the data sources I'm using (precisely because sharing the second report worked fine), so I'll systematically trial adding each data source in a separate report and let you know if I have any luck. 

[GilbertQ]

Ok great thanks, another thing is if you have a source with DirectQuery and they do not have access in the Power BI Service via a Gateway that might cause an issue also?

[AndreDeLange]

Cheers, but I can't use DirectQuery because the report has several custom time intelligence measures. I haven't tried to bypass the default restrictions for DirectQuery mode.

[GilbertQ]

Ok, just wanted to rule that out. I am rather interested as what is causing it not to show the visuals.

As you said doing it one by one will be the best way to understand what is causing it to not work.