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.
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.
Advocate IThanks for insight. Found that a misbehaving time slicer was the culprit in the page. Once I removed it all was normal. Slicer was to blame for this one. Sorry for the false positive in terms of malfunctioning refresh behavior.