Forum Discussion
Refresh data problems
Correct, with the August preview of PowerBI report server, it does not yet support data refresh as noted here. However, it's planned for an upcoming release.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-report-server-august-2017-preview-now-available/
Until the update you have a couple options (1) open and refresh manually with the desktop and save (2) consider using SSDT to open your report model and upgrade it to Analysis Services which support refresh (3) There are 3rd party tools such as power refresh which can do this as a side process.
Advocate IWe're using March 2018 release and have a Power BI report out there with scheduled refreshes set to occur. They all appear to run without errors, except for the fact that the data doesn't match up to the totals I get when refreshed on the client (same report/same file). Even when I save the currently refreshed client-side copy back to the report server, it will briefly show the correct total on a bar graph during refreshing, but then reverts back to old, out-dated data. It almost seems that it is defaulting to data cached when the Power BI report was originally pushed to the report server.
It is very odd and strange and I have no explanation. I've tried viewing it across three browsers (Chrome, IE, Edge) and the results appear to be the same, so it would appear to not be caused by bad browser behavior/caching.
Has anyone observed this or can anyone offer up any ideas in helping troubleshoot?
UPDATE: Misbehaving time slicer was causing the issue. That explains why I could briefly see the correct data displayed for a second or so when refreshing browser page only to have it revert to a different data result set. The slicer was causing unwarranted filtering (even though the slicer appeared to be untouched). I tested it by deleting the slicer from the report page and then the data took on a state of normalcy. Sorry for the false positive in terms of data refresh misbehavior!
Microsoft EmployeeWhen you view a PBI report, it loads an instance of the model+data and it's cached for that session on the server. The refresh happens a-sync to that, so there can be a period of time until the old cached model on the server is evicted. The default is 15 minutes. You can confirm this, by trying to view the report 15mins after the refresh OR try another user to force a new session. Closing and reopening the browser might also establish a new session.