Windows server Task scheduler start powershell that starts powerBI

Old situation: I have a .bat file that copies some files and then starts a powershell with a given script. This script will boot up PowerBI and will do some query and exporting then from PowerBI.
This works fine when fired up by taskscheduller when a user is logged on and only locked their PC.

Current situation: I’m moving to a Windows server instead of a separate computer with Windows desktop. I copied the task to the server and changed it to “run whether user is logged on or not”.

I noticed if I force “run” on the task scheduler, it runs is some hidden mode (although I did not check the Hidden checkbox) so I don’t see PowerBI get started. I assume it doesn’t, as my powershell script fails further along the line where it needs to find its data in powershell.

log_message "***********************************************"
log_message "Executing PBI_Exporter.ps1 at $($executionDate)"
log_message "Launching Power BI"

$template = "C:\LiveData\Eisen.pbix"
$PBIDesktop = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\PBIDesktop.exe"    


$app = START-PROCESS $PBIDesktop $template -PassThru
log_message "Waiting $($waitoPBD) seconds for PBI to launch"
Start-Sleep -s $waitoPBD

log_message "Assuming PBI is launched and ready now"

$pathtofile = (Get-ChildItem -Path c:\users -Filter msmdsrv.port.txt -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force | sort LastWriteTime | select -last 1).FullName
$port = gc $pathtofile
$port = $port -replace '\D',''
$dataSource = "localhost:$port"
$pathtoDataBase_Name = $pathtofile -replace 'msmdsrv.port.txt',''
$Database_Name = Get-ChildItem -Path $pathtoDataBase_Name -Filter *.db.xml -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force
$Database_Name = $Database_Name.ToString().Split(".") | select -First 1

I can confirm the powershell script at least gets executed, as I can see the log file getting created, and it runs till the message where it assumes PowerBI is launched. Right after that I get an error Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘Path’ because it is null. so I assume that it’s null because powerBI isn’t executed.

Is there some way to confirm this (maybe some try/catch blocks?) and/or solve this?

Answer

$app = START-PROCESS $PBIDesktop $template -PassThru

START-PROCESS $PBIDesktop $template -PassThru

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Dante1986 , Answer Author : postanote