Error: Time Travel on Table Is Forbidden

Issue

One or more tables in your BigQuery connection fail to sync with the following error:

Access Denied: BigQuery: Time travel on table <table_name> is forbidden as it has (or has had) row access policies.

Other tables in the same dataset may continue to sync successfully.

Environment

Connector: BigQuery

Resolution

To resolve this issue, ask your Google Cloud administrator to grant the service account configured for your Fivetran connection the bigquery.rowAccessPolicies.overrideTimeTravelRestrictions permission for the affected table. For more information, see the Google Time travel and row-level access documentation.

After granting the permission, verify time travel access:

Authenticate in BigQuery using the same service account configured for your Fivetran connection.

Run the following query, replacing the placeholder values with your source details:

SELECT *
FROM `<project_id>.<dataset_id>.<table_name>`
FOR SYSTEM_TIME AS OF TIMESTAMP_SUB(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(), INTERVAL 1 HOUR)
LIMIT 10;

If the query succeeds, run the Fivetran sync again. If it returns the same error, ask your administrator to confirm that the permission applies to the affected table.

Successfully running a standard SELECT query against the affected table doesn't confirm that the service account can access the table's historical data. Use FOR SYSTEM_TIME AS OF to verify time travel access.

Cause

This issue occurs when the Fivetran service account lacks the permission required to query historical data from a table that has or previously had row access policies.

We use BigQuery time travel to access historical data during incremental syncs for eligible tables. Without the bigquery.rowAccessPolicies.overrideTimeTravelRestrictions permission, BigQuery rejects these queries, causing the affected tables to fail to sync.