I am trying to refresh data through a power bi enterprise gateway that is shared by several users.
My setup:
My Home Office: Windows 10 machine with connectivity to 4 different MySQL databases and one SQL database. The different databases reside at various company locations in the U.S.
Power BI Gateway - Enterprise gateway is setup and functioning properly through my Power BI web App. I am using it to perform scheduled refreshes on the datasets that I published from my Windows 10 Machine through the Power BI Desktop and it is using my same Windows 10 machine as the Gateway.
2nd User: Located at his home office - Power BI Desktop App and Web App. Basically the same SQL and MySQL connections as data sources - He also has some Excel files that he is using as datasource for a few of his Power BI desktop apps.
Problem:
I have given the second user access and administrator rights to the Power BI Gateway I originally created. When he publishes his Desktop data to the Web app, which includes data sources from the same MySQL and SQL databases that I use, plus a few additional excel files that are resident on his local machine. He gets a failure when trying to connect to the Gateway.
The failure is definitely showing up for the files that are local to his machine. How do I map them and add them to the gateway? I assume I need to use a UNC path but I am not sure what that path would look like. So, I need help with that.
Then, once I am able to get the gateway configured for his files, would the MySQL and SQL databases that he is using (that are the exact same locations that I am using - currently successfully for my data through the Gateway) - will they automatically map? All of the naming and credentials are the same as what I am using.
You may want to check out this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1W5kISMF50
It seems to give a lot of information about when to use a gateway and how a gateway works with different types of files (local vs cloud based).
Thanks Linda, I have watched just about every video I can find on topic including the one you referenced. They all gloss over how to set up my particular scenario which doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to me. I would think lots of users would share Gateways and data sources within that gateway.
Most everything I can find tells me I need to use a UNC (universal naming convention) as the file path, (\server\ ) not the drive name AND it has to be the same on your actual power BI desktop file before you can connect it via the online power BI service.
The file is located on another user’s computer and he is trying add it as a data source to our shared gateway which is an Enterprise Gateway that was installed on my Windows 10 machine. I do not have any shared drives on my machine nor does he, so there are no UNC entries to list if we run the “net use” command.
We can only use local drives of the machine where Power BI Gateway is installed. It will not allow to connect to other Local systems.
For using Local Excel files, best option will be to put them in Sharepoint or OneDrive or similar Cloud sources supported by Power BI. Also if you have a LAN setup which is accessible through Gateway machine then files can be kept at a Folder there also.
Hi @dmartin, did the response provided by @ankit help you solve your query? If not, how far did you get and what kind of help you need further? If yes, kindly mark as solution the answer that solved your query.
Thank you for the Answer Ankit. I was not aware that only local drive access was available on the machine with the Gateway. That explains why I couldn’t access it.