Service account to avoid foot prints in report or Enterprise gateway is enough ?

[Anonymous]

Hi Gateway Experts,

I recently asked my IT team managing PowerBI service for a service account which i could use in my reports so that the reports doesn't have my foot prints.  This is what i had been practicing in my previous engagements and is a good practice too.

Now the IT guy has come back to me and said that the service account is not required since the enterprise gateway already has credentials which talks to the database.
In simple words my understanding of how the gateway works is that:

1. The gateway first validates the credentials in the report( be it mine or service account).
2. After validation sends the request to the datasource (with its own credentials).

3. Returns request.

The reason i want to use a Service account is that it doesnt require change of the passoword as per IT policies of the organisation and also to avoid my foot prints in the report. Another risk i think is that if i use my own credentials and do not update the credentials in each report then the validation by the gateway will fail which will result in the schdules/refreshed to fail too. 

My understanding could be limited and humbly accept it in advance and seek you expert advise on this.

Thanks.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous There are a couple pieces here. The first is that the service account when you set up the gateway will assume your password. I don't recall off the top of my head if that will fail if your user has a password reset.

Once the gateway is installed, the gateway uses the credentials that you create in the Service for each dataset you create. The credentials in the report aren't passed down, its the credentials on the gateway datasources that are used.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Seth_C_Bauer ,

Its not the password of the service account which will be required to change, however its the password of my account which i am using in my reports which will expire after sometime which and raises a concern in my mind.

Are you saying that the credentials used/embedded in the report doesn't matter and its the gateway which takes care of it ?

Shariq

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@Anonymous Correct. I am saying that the credentials you use to create the report are not the same credentials used when you are using an Enterprise Gateway. After the gateway is installed, you create data sources in the Service that match the connections you make in the PBIX file. The credentials you set up on the datasources on the gateway in the Service are used, not your credentials, provided you have access to the datasource in the Service. Those credentials should be the one's that do not change.

[v-lili6-msft]

hi @Anonymous 

The gateway will use the credentials that you add in manage gateway to conncet to datasource.

please refer to this document:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-onprem-indepth

Regards,

Lin