We couldn't connect to the Analysis Services server

Question

I recently upgraded the Power BI Report Server by following this article Upgrade Power BI Report Server to the latest May 2025 update, and the upgrade has been done sucessfully, but after upgrade all dashboard with "Direct Mode" is not currently working and show this error.

We couldn't connect to the Analysis Services server. Make sure you've entered the connection string correctly.

This issue is only found for all dahshboards file, the paginated report is working properly.

Answer 1

Power BI Report Server: We couldn't connect to the Analysis Services server.

The real reason of this issue is that starting from the May 2024 version, Power BI Report Server no longer supports non-encrypted connections to SQL Server.

What does it mean?

If your report connects to certain data sources (like SQL Server, Analysis Services, or other relational DBs) without encryption or across servers, PBIRS checks whether the target server is considered trusted. If the server is not explicitly marked as trusted, the connection may fail even if your connection string looks correct.

To solve this issue, Microsoft introduced the PBI_SQL_TRUSTED_SERVERS environment variable to hold all DB servers name as trusted server.
Read the detailed solution step by step at We couldn’t connect to the Analysis Services server. Make sure you’ve entered the connection string correctly