PowerBI Desktop Option Greyed Out

[jsaulez]

Hi. When i launch ALM from PBI Desktop, the source option to choose the PBIX file that is open is greyed out. I cant choose it as a source.

[nphadro07]

I am experiencing the same issue. is there a resolution?

[christianwade]

Hi all, that option is only enabled when Power BI Desktop is open in the background, normally when launch as an external tool as described here: http://aka.ms/externaltools

[nphadro07]

@christianwade Thanks so much for the reply. I am launching it through the external tool ribbon in Power BI. As you suggest, I thought this option would be enabled similar to how when I launch dax studio it connects to the desktop model. I've tried uninstalling and then reinstalling. I've also tried restarting my computer :). Nothing seems to work. Any thoughts?

[christianwade]

No worries. I'm not sure what's causing this. I'd love to find out but I suspect it is environment specific. I just tried with the latest ALM Toolkit version and I'm not getting that behavior. It's difficult to debug when I can't reproduce the problem on my development environment.

It's definitely interesting that DAX Studio connects since it should be doing the same thing.

As a workaround in the meantime, you can connect with DAX Studio and get the local server name with the port number like (for example localhost:61432) from the status bar in DAX Studio. Then paste it into the source Workspace field and click the dropdown to get the dataset name.

[nphadro07]

@christianwade I agree that it seems strange that it is not working. But your work around works perfect. Thank you for your quick response.

[nheuk]

Same problem here with Power BI Desktop September and ALM 5.0.33 Workaround works with Dax Studio or Tabular Editor

[christianwade]

I'll keep an eye out for an opportunity to repro it on my dev environment