Forum Discussion
Automatically adding date for last refresh of data
Hi
Is it somehow possible to automatically adding a date to your dashboard that tells the last date for refreshing your data?
Thanks
Hi Anonymous,
You can directly use the last refresh time in tile of dashboard. Clicking the ... on the top right hand corner of the tile, then select Tile details and select “Display last refresh time” as shown in the following screenshots. The refresh time will now show at the top of the tile.
Another method is to generate Last Refreshed Date with Power Query, then create the Last Refreshed Measure and add it to dashboard. For more details, please review the following blog:
http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2016/06/08/display-last-refreshed-date-in-power-bi/
Thanks,
Lydia Zhang
16 Replies
I know this is late in the conversation, but I've been working with this today and have found that a better solution for me is to put the refresh date in the data source. If you're pulling from a data warehouse, use the load date. If you are using a query there's usually a getdate()/Now()... function you can use.
Even if you use the system time in Power BI Service you are only identifying when the Service ran, not the age of your original source.
Hi Anonymous
it depends on you data source. When I use excel, csv etc. I use Date modified field from file header. When I use DW data I use the log tables with information about last refresh of data. Then I create simple table(s) with these dates and pin it as tile to dashboard.
If you want last date of refresh that was done by Power BI Service, then you can use the option to show refresh date when editing tile.
Regards.
Pavel
PavelR Thanks for your reply.
Sounds pretty easy going when importing data from excel, csv. The thing is, that I use "live" (when refreshing) data from Salesforce repports.
I'm not sure what you mean by showing refresh date when editing tile? Can you explain?
/Anders
Hi Anonymous,
You can directly use the last refresh time in tile of dashboard. Clicking the ... on the top right hand corner of the tile, then select Tile details and select “Display last refresh time” as shown in the following screenshots. The refresh time will now show at the top of the tile.
Another method is to generate Last Refreshed Date with Power Query, then create the Last Refreshed Measure and add it to dashboard. For more details, please review the following blog:
http://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2016/06/08/display-last-refreshed-date-in-power-bi/
Thanks,
Lydia Zhang
While these methods aren't exactly onerous... why is this not just off the shelf functionality for PowerBI desktop?
Basic dynamic metadata for a report... It should be simpler than this.
In PowerBI desktop, I should just be on the Insert Menu and configurable the same as any other visual/shape etc - Last Refresh Date/TIme
if this method does NOT work for you, then please click below. I have found the way to create custom last data-time refresh by using two simple DAX functions and it works flowlessly!
Good question, it's possible to add a robust timestap of the refresh in Power BI. But there's a cavait.
Let's focus on the Power Query way. The DateTime.LocalNow() function in Power Query retrieves the current time on the machine that refreshes the Power BI dataset.
That can be your laptop, but when you upload a dataset to the power BI service it can also happen from another country. That’s all depending on the country your tenant is in.
For example, my tenant is in Ireland, even though I work in the Netherlands.
In those cases the last refresh date can be wrong. One suggestion if you’re experiencing that issue is to include a daylight saving time.
You can do that by offsetting the UTC value from DateTimeZone.UTCNow() by the relevant offset values for your country. Also known as summer and wintertime. Or GMT + 1 GMT+ 2, those kind of notations.
Some more details are written here:
https://gorilla.bi/power-query/last-refresh-datetime/By finding the last sunday in march and last sunday in october, you know when daylight saving switches time.
Hope that helps,
Rick
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