Power BI Ingestion Guide: Setup & Prerequisites

Power BI Prerequisites

DataHub connects to Power BI using a service principal / Microsoft Entra application.

In order to configure ingestion from Power BI, you'll first have to ensure you have a Microsoft Entra application with permission to access the Power BI resources.

Register a new Microsoft Entra application

Follow the below steps to register an Entra application:

1. Login to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com

2. Go to Microsoft Entra ID

3. Navigate to App registrations

4. Click on + New registration

5. In the Register an application window, fill out the Name of the application (e.g. datahub-powerbi-connector-app) and keep the other defaults as-is, then click Register.

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6. Once the app is finished registering, the Azure portal will open up the application overview, as shown below. On this screen, note down the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID.

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Create a client secret for the Entra application

1. Navigate to Certificates & secrets on the Entra application you just created.

2. Click on New client secret

3. Generate a new secret and note down the secret Value

Create a new Microsoft Entra group

The application you registered will need to be a member of an Entra group in order to be granted Power BI/Fabric permissions. Follow the below steps to create a new Microsoft Entra Group:

1. Go to Microsoft Entra ID

2. Navigate to Groups and click on New group

3. In the New group window, leave Group type as the default (Security) and fill out the Group name (e.g. datahub-powerbi-connector-group), as shown in the below screenshot:

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Add the Entra application as a member of the Entra group

1. Navigate to All groups and click on your newly created group.

2. Navigate to Members and click Add members.

3. Add your Microsoft Entra application (e.g. datahub-powerbi-connector-app) as a member.

Grant permissions to access Power BI APIs

You need to add the created Entra group under your Power BI/Fabric tenant settings in order to grant resource access. Follow the below steps to grant privileges to the group and all applications within it:

1. Login to Power BI: https://app.powerbi.com/

2. Go to Settings -> Admin portal

3. In the Admin portal, navigate to Tenant settings.

4. For each of the following options, enable the option and add the previously created security group (e.g. datahub-powerbi-connector-group) under Specific security groups:

   • Developer settings > Service principals can call Fabric public APIs (or Allow service principals to use Power BI APIs in older versions of Power BI)
   • Admin API settings > Service principals can access read-only admin APIs
   • Admin API settings > Enhance admin APIs responses with detailed metadata
   • Admin API settings > Enhance admin APIs responses with DAX and mashup expressions

Add the Entra application as a member of your Power BI / Fabric workspaces

For workspaces which you want to ingest into DataHub, add the Entra application as a member.

1. Navigate to Workspaces

2. Open the workspace which you want to ingest, as shown in the below screenshot:

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3. Click Manage Access

4. Click Add people or groups

5. Add your Microsoft Entra application (e.g. datahub-powerbi-connector-app) as a member. For most cases Viewer role is enough, but for profiling the Contributor role is required.

Next Steps

Once you've done all of the above steps, it's time to move on to configuring the actual ingestion source within DataHub.