Troubleshooting authentication issues in Power BI

There are two types of authentication issues you might see in Power BI when using it with  Auvik data.

1. Authentication issues related to Auvik user settings 

When trying to load data in Power BI, if you might receive an error message about Clients / Sites being blocked by failed queries, and further errors on alerts, device inventory, and other items that say a table wasn’t found or access is forbidden. In these situations, you’re likely dealing with an Auvik user role or user access issue.

To confirm the issue is with your user settings, dismiss the error (click Close or the X in the top right corner), and navigate to the Power Query Editor.

In the Power Query Editor, you’ll see a list of tables. Click on each of the tables.

If you see data in the Client / Sites and Client / Sites Details tables but see errors or no data in the other tables, this confirms the issue is with your Auvik user settings.

A user must have Super Admin or API Access Only access to all of the sites being reported on. To ensure your Auvik account is set up to work with Power BI, see Setting up your Auvik User Account to be used with PowerBI.

2. Wrong user-name or password (API Key) in Power BI

A wrong password or API key will trigger an error that your credentials couldn’t be authenticated. Double-check your credentials and re-enter them.

What if you’ve followed all the steps above, and have referenced Setting up your Auvik user account to be used with PowerBI, but things still aren’t working? In that case, we recommend redoing all the steps in the order described in I've followed every step but still can't get the data to load.
 

“Access to resource is forbidden” or “Column not found”

Access to resource is forbidden

A 403 Forbidden error means Power BI reached Auvik, but the API user is not authorized to access the requested resource.

Check that:

• The API user has the required role and API permissions.
• The user has access to the top-level multi-site and every site included in the report.
• The API key belongs to the user configured in Power BI.
• The Auvik region and API endpoint are correct.

If the user’s role or site access must be changed, an Auvik administrator must update the permissions. After the change, refresh the Power BI session and retry the query.

Column not found

A “Column not found” error usually indicates that the Power BI query or report template does not match the data returned by the selected Auvik API endpoint.

This can occur when:

• An older Power BI template is being used.
• A custom query references a column that is no longer returned.
• The query uses the wrong endpoint.
• The query and API version do not match.

To troubleshoot:

1. Confirm that you are using the current Power BI template or report version.
2. Open the query in Power Query Editor.
3. Confirm that the query references the correct Auvik API endpoint.
4. Compare the column names in the query with the fields returned by the API.
5. Update the query or template to match the current API response.

Validate the connection outside Power BI

Use cURL or Postman with the same Auvik credentials and region-specific API base URL used by Power BI.

• A 200 OK response confirms that the credentials and endpoint are working.
• A 401 Unauthorized response usually indicates an invalid username, API key, or authentication format.
• A 403 Forbidden response indicates that the API user lacks permission to access the requested tenant, site, or endpoint.

Do not include API keys or other credentials when sharing request details with Support.