Power Automate in Power BI - "Unsuccessful" error message for small number of users.

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Posted on by MO-19080930-0

I have a regular Power Automate visual button embedded in Power BI. I have shared this with our users and this works correctly for the majority of them. A small number however receive the "Unsuccessful" message (attached image from elsewhere but the same as ours) and it is not clear why. Initially the access was shared to them via Groups, but I have tested with manually adding their account as well giving them co-ownership of the flow as well with the same issue. I have also confirmed that they are logged into Power BI with the same account. After giving them ownership of the flow, I got them to open the workflow and use the "Test - Automatically - With a Recently Used Trigger" which ran successfully for them in the editor. The connections are mine that are shared to them in Run Only Users, not relying on their own licenses/connections. When the Unsuccessful message is generated, there is no failed flow run attempt the flow just doesn't trigger at all.

The small number of users belong to the same internal business unit separate from the ones it does work for but they exist in the same active directory as the users it does work for, and they all have the same M365 Licenses (E3).

What account settings should I be looking at to try and diagnose this? It would be more obvious if they couldn't run the Flow themselves through the editor and the issue was something to do with a license not being assigned but as it is I don't know. Is there some way to get an actual error message in place of the Unsuccessful?

Thanks.

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ronaldwalcott 3,898 Moderator on at

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Are the Power BI workspace settings the same for all users or do the users for which it is not working only have the viewer role?

Roles in workspaces in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

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RaghavMishra 40 on at

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Hi,

That "Unsuccessful" message in a Power Automate visual is generated before the cloud flow is invoked, which is why you don’t see a failed run in the flow history. It almost always points to one of: (1) the user can’t resolve the visual’s trigger context, (2) a premium‑connector licensing gap for that user, (3) the Run-only sharing didn’t fully take effect, or (4) a tenant/Conditional Access policy is blocking the call from Power BI to Power Automate for that subset of users.

What to check, in order

Confirm the trigger is the Power BI button trigger. The visual only works with the "Power BI button clicked" trigger — if the flow was edited to use a different trigger, the visual will show Unsuccessful for everyone. See Trigger a cloud flow from a Power BI report.

Premium-connector licensing for the run‑only users. Run-only sharing lets users execute the flow using your connections, but if any action uses a premium connector, the running user still needs a Power Automate Premium license (or the flow needs to be in a Power Apps/Power Automate per-app/per-flow plan that covers them). E3 alone does not include premium connectors. Reference: Power Automate licensing – types and licensing FAQs.

Verify Run-only sharing is applied to the correct connections. In the flow → Edit → Run only users, every connection in the flow should be set to Use this connection (userPrincipalName@…) for the run-only users — not "Provided by run-only user". If even one connection is set to "Provided by run-only user" and that user has no connection of their own, the visual fails silently. See Share a flow as a run-only user.

Workspace capacity in Power BI. The Power Automate visual requires the report to be in a workspace backed by Power BI Premium / Premium Per User / Fabric capacity for users who don’t have PPU themselves. If the failing users are viewing from a workspace that doesn’t have capacity assigned for them, the visual will be Unsuccessful while it works for owners/contributors. See Create the new workspaces in Power BI.

Conditional Access / tenant policy. Because the failing users are all in one business unit, this is the most likely cause when 1–4 check out. Have your Entra admin pull the user’s sign-in logs for the Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power BI service principals at the time of the click — a CA policy scoped to that BU (device compliance, location, MFA grace, app-enforced restrictions) will show as an Interrupted/Failure sign-in even though the user is signed into Power BI itself. Reference: Sign-in logs in Microsoft Entra.

On surfacing the actual error

There isn’t a supported way to replace the Unsuccessful text in the visual itself — it’s a fixed UI state. The diagnostic path Microsoft documents is to reproduce the click and then look at the Entra sign-in log for that user (step 5) and the flow’s run history; if no run was created, the failure is on the Power BI → Power Automate hand-off, not inside the flow.

Given your symptoms (works in the flow editor under "Test", fails only from the visual, only for one BU, all on E3, connections are yours via Run-only), the two most likely root causes are (a) a premium-connector license gap surfacing only when the trigger comes from the visual, or (b) a Conditional Access policy scoped to that business unit.

Found this helpful? Please mark ✅ "Does this answer your question?" so others searching for the same issue can find it quickly. A 👍 on "Was this reply helpful?" or a ♥ Like is also much appreciated!

Raghav Mishra — LinkedIn | PowerAI Labs

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