Limits and Non‑Goals

This page lists what the MCP server intentionally does not do, plus common constraints that affect outcomes.

Not a report editor

The server can connect to:

Power BI Desktop (local PBIX) for local model work.
Power BI Service datasets via XMLA (requires an XMLA-capable workspace/capacity).

Some features are Service-only (for example, certain impersonation scenarios) and some are Desktop-only (local discovery).

If you expect to use Service datasets, but can’t:

In browse-only mode, expect:

Queries and previews may be capped (by configuration and/or runtime preferences) to keep responses LLM-friendly. Ask for smaller outputs:

“Return only the top 20 rows.” “Return only aggregated results.” “Summarize, don’t dump long tables.”

Some operations may request user confirmations (for example, “first edit in this session” prompts, rollbacks, or other destructive actions).

Client behavior varies:

Some clients show a confirmation UI (elicitation).
Some clients don’t support confirmations; in those cases, the assistant should ask for an explicit “yes” in chat, and some operations may require an explicit confirm flag behind the scenes.

If you want maximum safety regardless of client:

“Plan first and ask me to confirm before any write. Apply changes one step at a time.”

For tier details, see License management and Pricing.

Out of scope

These come up a lot in real projects:

No report/visual edits - it cannot change pages, visuals, bookmarks, or themes. If you need report changes, use Power BI Desktop or the Service editor directly. MCP can help you prepare the model (measures, calc groups) that your visuals consume.
No publishing/deployment - it cannot publish PBIX files, promote deployment pipelines, or manage releases. After making model changes through MCP, publish through your normal process (Desktop > Publish, or your CI/CD pipeline).
No workspace/tenant administration - it cannot grant permissions, change capacity settings, or manage tenant features. These are Power BI admin tasks done through the Admin portal or PowerShell.
No credential management - it cannot set data source credentials, gateways, or scheduled refresh settings. MCP can trigger a one-time data refresh, but ongoing refresh scheduling is done through the Service UI or REST API.