Forum Discussion
Data Refresh
Regarding your first point, I am working locally in the Power BI Desktop. I am not as concerned about getting the latest data in the desktop as I am about having the latest data on the Power BI Web Service.
I've already published my Product Stock Inventory report to the web service and have enabled a schedule refresh. When hosting the CSV file in OneDrive, would I still need to manually export the CSV file, and change the name to match the original, to my OneDrive to get the latest data?
Do you have any other clearer intructions on how to complete this?
So, if I understood correctly, your issue relies that the data source needs to be manually updated on daily basis, and because of this, it has a different name every day. Is that correct?
If that's the case, could you specify from where do you need to extract the csv files?
Yes our product stock inventory is hosted on a website and the data from that can then be exported into a CSV file. Meaning that I have to manually export a CSV file everyday to get the latest data. And yes these CSV files all have a different name, with the date and timestamp that it was created in the name.
Okay, I see 2 options, one a short term workaround, and the other one as a long term solution:
1) Short-term: When you export the file, save it with a specific naming convention on a cloud-based location (Sharepoint/OneDrive/Google Drive). You will always name it this way on a daily basis. Since it will have the same name, the last file would be replaced/overwritten. Your Power BI report will have no issue because it will always read the file with the same name.
You can reduce some manual steps here if you develop some small automation in Power Automate to do the file saving process, but this solution will always inherently be manual because it requires for you to extract data manually.
2) The long-term solution is you finding a way to connect to the web page (or the database/data sources) behind it. The nature of this will depend on the architecture of the web page. By setting up a direct connection you avoid exporting manually the data. As to how to achieve this, my answer is, it depends on how is the data behind the web page structured/located.
As far as the short term solution, once I export it and store my file on a cloud-based platform, all the data in my report should be updated in both the deskop and online web service or just one location? And when I export that new file, will the measures I previously created still be available to me? Or do I need to create new measures since it is technically a new table?