Forum Discussion
Power BI scheduled refresh functionality is not enabled
We have created several Power BI reports that pull data from a SharePoint list. The reports are then published and the report links added to a page in SharePoint where users can click the links to display the reports. Both Power BI and SharePoint are in the same OneDrive environment.
For the reports to be useful to users, they need to update whenever the data in the list is updated (or on a scheduled basis). At the moment, the only way we can update the reports is using the refresh button in the desktop app.
Power BI can be configured to schedule periodic refresh, but the issue is that we are unable to select scheduled refresh options for the datasets (the section is grayed out). Is there a configuration setting that needs to be changed to enable the scheduled update function?
Here is the link to the 2.0 beta connector, which, at least in my implementations, have proven to be alot faster on refresh: Power Query SharePoint Online list connector - Power Query | Microsoft Docs
As for your second question, it may be possible to kick off a power automate script to initiate a refresh, but I am not sure.
7 Replies
In the Power BI service, under the Dataset settings, did you configure the Data source credentials?
The scheduled refresh functionality is activated now and seems to work. However, it seems that for the scheduled refresh to work, after the SharePoint list updates need to be pulled into Power BI desktop by using the manual refresh function, and only then can scheduled refresh update the Power BI service reports. Is this correct?
Also, it takes a minimum of 20-30 minutes for the Power BI desktop to refresh from SharePoint – is this typical and is there any way to shorten the refresh process?
Without seeing any screenshots of the setup in the service, it is a bit hard for me to follow. You can set the refresh schedule in the service for the refresh. However, if you are saying you want the report to be updated immediately after you update the list in SharePoint, you can do an on-demand report refresh in the service, without having to involve the desktop app.
Refreshes from sharepoint lists can take a bit of time depending on the amount of data. Also, be sure to use the newer version sharepoint list connector (might still be beta)
Further testing proved the scheduled refresh works as expected. The only issue remaining is the time it takse to perform the refresh (at least 20-30 min). Do you have a link to info on the updated SharePoint connector? First I heard of it.
Additional question. The reports (launched from links in a SharePoint page) do not have a way to launch an on demand refresh. Is there a way to put on demand refresh on the displayed page?