In February, Microsoft released a native Snowflake connector for Power BI, enabling single sign-on (SSO) for users connecting to Snowflake from Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service. More recently, some enhanced capabilities were added to the Snowflake connector. Today, it has been announced that these capabilities are now generally available.
With the primary purpose of streamlining access to Snowflake data warehouses, the following enhancements are being provided:
- Removing the requirement for an on-premises gateway and thus eliminating the friction associated with deploying and managing gateways.
- Providing a new authentication method for Snowflake through AAD. Snowflake user identities can be synced with AAD to enable data access.
- Enabling SSO with Power BI based on AAD authentication. With SSO enabled in the data source definition, users opening or refreshing a report in DirectQuery mode are authenticated and authorized seamlessly with their Power BI (AAD) identities to access Snowflake.
For those whom the SSO option is marked as unavailable, Power BI service admins will need to access Tenant settings in the Power BI Admin portal, and then enable the setting termed "Snowflake SSO". For more information on the Snowflake connector for Power BI, its documentation pages for Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service can be visited to learn more.
