Clarify data refresh behaviour on publish to service

[andyclap]

This is a question about what happens when I publish a report.

I have a report that is scheduled to be refreshed on the service three times a day.

However sometimes I have been working on a new iteration of the report for a while, and I don't have the latest data.

Refreshing the report takes over an hour locally, so I would prefer it if I could publish the new version, and for it to refresh and become visible when that refresh is complete.

What I'm noticing is that a refresh seems to happen when I publish the reprot - immediately after publishing a report, I see it refreshing on the service.

Can I clarify the behaviour here: Is the out of date data in the report just published shown until the refresh is compete; or is the previous published version is shown until the refresh is complete?

Is there a setting somewhere to control behaviour? Our refresh is quite extensive so there may be times I have the latest data and want to publish a minor change immediately without refreshing on the service.

[andyclap]

The accepted answer is ambiguous, possibly because of the use of the word previous.

In the context of a pbix being updated locally in PBI desktop and published to the PBI Service:

The previous data is not used (as in previously available data) pending a refresh. The accepted answer can be interpreted to suggest this happens.

Instead whatever data was published immediately replaces the previous data.

So this precludes the familiar workflow of developing a report using sample data, and uploading it, with the refresh happening on the server and the new data being visible after the refresh. Instead developers need access to the live data and must refresh the data before uploading. This is obviously not a professional approach as it violates the data minimisation principle of GDPR.

And more annoyingly I've just replaced our company's reporting data with test data for an hour or so while it refreshes 😖

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @andyclap ,

1. The previous data is used until the refresh is complete

2. You could cancel refresh now

3. Changes in data source table structure, or schema, such as a new, renamed, or removed column can only be applied in Power BI Desktop, and in the Power BI service they can cause the refresh to fail, and you need publish to the service, it is not possible to coordinate this scenario automatically

For more details, you can read related document: Data refresh in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best regards,
Community Support Team_Binbin Yu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[andyclap]

Also I have several downstream reports that use the data - likewise at what point do they need re-uploading for example if there is a breaking data change such as a field rename? Is it possible to coordinate this scenario automatically?