Update 2: The “skip test connection” feature is now available again for on-premises data sources. For cloud data sources we don’t have an ETA yet, but will circle back as soon as we do.
Update 1: Due to few issues identified recently, we have temporarily disabled the “skip test connection” feature . We are working on making this available again for on-premises data sources by late-June. For cloud data sources we don’t have an ETA yet, but will circle back as soon as we do.
In Power BI, today, a new data source (cloud or on-prem) is created only if a successful connection can be made to the data source with the credentials provided. If it fails, the data source creation fails with an error message as shown below:
The same applies to editing credentials for existing data sources. If the test connection for the newly added credentials fail, then the changes aren’t saved.
For scenarios, where the data sources are currently unavailable or slow, this creates inconvenience for gateway admins requiring them to retry when the data sources are available. To help alleviate this, we have added a new option called “Skip test connection” which helps create such data sources. As you see below, the same data source has now been successfully created.
Note: This feature requires February 2019 gateway release or later.
For cloud data sources, you can set this when you click on edit credentials in datasets settings as shown below.
For cloud data sources connecting to a URL, a test connection is performed against the root URL. This may be a blocker where the URL contains authentication keys, for example. Enabling Skip test connection also helps in such scenarios.
Note: This feature is currently not available for Sovereign clouds. We are working on making it available in the upcoming weeks.