Nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio

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In this post I want to share a nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio that I found. So that you can link to Power BI workspaces that are in other Azure accounts.

To clarify, Synapse Studio is the management application that comes with Azure Synapse Analytics. In order to use Synapse Studio, you must first create a Synapse workspace. I covered it in another post which was a five-minute crash course about Synapse Studio.

Anyway, say you are using Synapse Studio using one Azure account and you access Power BI workspace using a different account. However, you want to be able to view those Power BI reports in the Develop hub within Synapse Studio.

If you try to use the wizard from the Home Hub in Synapse Studio in Synapse Studio you only get to view Power BI Workspaces linked to your account.

One way you can try and resolve it is to ask somebody to add your Azure Account to the Active Directory tenant that your Power BI account uses. Providing it’s possible.

However, there are a couple of ways you can do a quick fix for this in Synapse Studio. I will show you one that I have found to be consistent. However, bear in mind that this is supposed to be a short-term fix for testing purposes. Long term you should have the right permissions setup.

Nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio

If you are going to try this nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio you will need your Power BI workspace ID and tenant ID

To do this I stay in the initial wizard and fill out the name and description of the Power BI workspace I want to connect to. Afterwards, I select the ‘Edit’ option under workspace name and then enter my Power BI Workspace ID.

In reality, this alone adds Power BI to the Develop Hub. However, at this stage I won’t be able to access Power BI in Synapse Studio. To complete the process, I have to go into the Manage Hub instead and select ‘Linked Services’.

In Linked services, hover over the linked service I have created for Power BI and select the code icon. Which is shown as curly brackets.

I change the tenantID to the one my Power BI workspace is in and then click ‘Apply’.

{
    "name": "Test workspace",
    "type": "Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/linkedservices",
    "properties": {
        "annotations": [],
        "type": "PowerBIWorkspace",
        "typeProperties": {
            "workspaceID": "INSERT YOUR POWER BI WORKSPACE ID HERE",
            "tenantID": "INSERT YOUR POWER BI TENANT ID HERE"
        }
    }
}

Now I go into the Develop Hub and refresh my browser screen (most common way is to press F5).

I then expand the Power BI section that appears afterwards and select a dataset.

I am asked to sign into your Microsoft account. I then enter another account that I use for Power BI.

Once authenticated I can work with your Power BI reports in Synapse Studio as below.

Now I must state that even though this nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio works it’s not always a smooth process. You can be asked a few times to authenticate. Plus, you can end up having to refine Power BI permissions to be able to do this properly using this method.

Alternative nifty fix

You can do this another way similar to this nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio as well. You can create a Linked service to anything else in Synapse Studio and then replace the code for it to be the same as the sample JSON above.

However, if you are going to try this be aware that you cannot change the name of the Linked service when changing the JSON in Synapse Studio. So, make sure you give the Linked service the correct name at the start.

Final words

I hope this nifty Power BI fix in Synapse Studio is useful to some of you. If you are going to try this bear in mind that it should only be for testing purposes.

Of course, if you have any comments or queries about this post feel free to reach out to me.