Embeded Power BI report with service principal using on premise SSAS as dataset

Question

i've got an on premise SSAS instance which is configured in powerbi using gateway, configuration is proper as report using dataset from SSAS works from app.powebi and even from embedded report if token is requested using username/password flow.

From security reasons our client demand was to introduce service principal, it is turned on, set as admin on workspace, i've added 'ReadOverrideEffectiveIdentity' to service principle using powerbi dataset api.

Currently when i request embedd token using clientSecret (service principal) it requires EffectiveIdentity to be passed (which was not passed before in this path).

I've tested two different approaches:

-passed EffectiveIdentity with identifier = ServicePrincipalObjectId

• i can see in developer tools that https://wabi-north-europe-redirect.analysis.windows.net/powerbi/metadata/models/5330774/?modelOption... returned 401

-passed currently logged userId (this is normally passed for other datasets pointing directly to database):

• report is embedded but when it's loadingvisuals i get 401 and i can see that 'https://wabi-north-europe- redirect.analysis.windows.net/explore/querydata' returned
  "{"error":{"code":"RLSNotAuthorizedForImpersonation","pbi.error":{"code":"RLSNotAuthorizedForImpersonation","parameters":{},"details":[],"exceptionCulprit":1}}}"

i've tried with different users, added manually to SSAS security pane with proper roles, Gateway is in newest possible version. In Gateway logs there is info about request, some processing but in scenario when it doesn't work there is no report sql execution.

Do you have any ideas what should i check next and what is wrong?

Answer 1

On the data gateway that is being used to connect to the onpremise SSAS dataset, you must add the service principal as an administrator. It's possible that you'll need to add the Service Principal to an Azure AD group and make this group a gateway administrator.

PowerBI.COM
Toggle the gear in the upper right corner.
Select Manage Gateways from the drop-down menu.
On the left, click the gateway that connects to your on-premise SSAS database.
Go to the Gateway.
Switch from the Gateway Cluster Settings tab to the Administrators tab by clicking.
Assign the service principal to the role of administrator.
Are you also certain you're creating the embedded-token with the correct identity? An effective identification will be required for SSAS data sources.

"identities": [
    {
      "username": "user@my-app.com",
      "roles": [
        "report-rls-role-name"
      ],
      "datasets": [
        "my-dataset-id-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx"
      ]
    }
]

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