Chris Webb has a workaround for dataset refresh errors when using Power BI and writing M code:
This is just a variation on the widely-used M pattern for using functions to iterate over and combine data from multiple data sources; Matt Masson has a good blog describing this pattern here. In this case I’m doing the following:
- Defining a table using #table() with three rows containing three search terms.
- Defining a function that calls the metadata API. It takes one parameter, a search term, and returns a value indicating whether the search was successful or not from the JSON document returned. What the API actually returns isn’t relevant here, though, just the fact that I’m calling it. Note the highlighted lines in the code above that show how I’m constructing the URL passed to Web.Contents() by simply concatenating the base URL with the string passed in via the custom function’s Term parameter.
- Adding a custom column to the table returned by the first step, and calling the function defined in the second step using the search term given in each row.
This query refreshes with no problems in Power BI Desktop. However, when you publish a report that uses this code to PowerBI.com and try to refresh the dataset, you’ll see that refresh fails and returns a rather unhelpful error message:
Data source error Unable to refresh the model (id=1264553) because it references an unsupported data source.
The nature of the problem makes sense, and Chris provides one method of getting around this error.