Power BI dataset content not accessible error

[Anonymous]

I have a question related to datasets of published reports. My team has a Workspace in Power BI service where we publish reports to. All members of this workspace have Pro licenses and have the abiliy to refresh monthly/quarterly/annual reports. One of the users who last refreshed a report left the organisation. When another team member tried to refresh the report it threw an error saying something along the lines of "content not accessible". We then had to delete the dataset from Power BI service and re-publish it. It worked but it meant that the URL for ths report that was publsihed on our corporate website had to be changed. This was not ideal given that we had a period of time when this report was not accessible on the website. In another example where we faced the same issue, some key external stakeholders who had access to the dashboard via its URL had to be re-supplied.

How can we avoid this situation in future? What we want is other team members to be able to refresh the report that was published or last refreshed by some one else who may have left the organistaion. Is there a way to achieve this? Is this a permissions issue? In our organisation ICT control most of the Admin functions in Power BI service which report developers dont have access to, can this situation be avoided by modifying some setting that needs Admin rights?

[v-lid-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Sorry for that, but we cannot reproduce this issue by following steps:

1. enter a new app workspace by Test1

2. add a user (Test2) as contributor

3. use the Test2 to refresh a dataset in this workspace which ownered by Test1

4. remove Test2 from this workspace.

5. delete Test2 in 365 Admin Center then check that Test2 cannot sign in Power BI Service

6. use Test1 to refresh the dataset and the refresh complete

If you mean the dataset is ownered by the deleted user,We can try to use the takeover dataset API or takeover in setting to get the access of this dataset.

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

In the exampes we have, user Test2 is also the owner of the dataset. We did try dataset takeover but it threw the error "content not accessible". This was not a one-off but it happened to a few teams in our organisation where users who owned a dataset left the organisation. I wonder if it has got anything to do with the "Users" area in Admin portal which is controlled by ICT in our organisation which we do not have access to, may be not but just wondered?

[v-lid-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Sorry for late reply, but we did not find any setting could lead to this error in Admin Portal. Do you remove the user from workspace or delete account in Azure Activity Dictory and Office Admin Center when you mentioned "left the organisation"? What kind of workspace are you using?

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

We used to be on Normal Shared Workspaces before but have recently moved to Premium capacity.
I will speak to our ICT department to understand more about what happens in the AD and Admin Center when a user leaves the organisation.

My guess is - the user who published a report to the Workspace left the organisation and as a result must have been removed from the Aure AD and Office Admin Center. Therefore Power BI considers the datasets published by the user (that left the organisation) as untrustworthy. So it does not allow another user to Refresh it and has to be deleted and re-published.