How to update existing dashboard with new data?

[Anonymous]

I created a dashboard visualisation with a data set. I am wondering if I can keep this visualisation and just update the data every week so that I don't have to repeatedly create the visualisation everytime I receive a new data set?

Is this possible?

Thanks!

[Cmcmahan]

This is very possible, and one of the main strengths of Power BI. 

If you click the "Edit Queries" button at the top in the Home ribbon, you'll see all of your data imports.  You can edit them to use the new data source, which will update your visuals.  Depending on your data source, you can even set it up to do it automatically.

What sort of file are you using as your data source right now?  

[Anonymous]

Thanks you for the quick response.

I am currently using Excel as my data source.

Can I set it up automatically?

Thanks!

Ashley

[v-frfei-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

To keep data up to date. We can set schedule refresh of the dataset. In your scernaio, Gateway is required. You can refer to the online document as below to know how to do that.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/refresh-scheduled-refresh

[Cmcmahan]

The easiest way would be to simply replace the file contents with the new data.  This can be done either by copy/pasting the data into the master file, or just renaming the file to whatever filename PowerBI is expecting each week.

There are ways to automate this, but they get much more complicated, and depend on how you get your excel file in the first place. You can start reading here on how to do that, and find a solution that works for you.

[Anonymous]

Hi Cmcmahan,

If I created new measures/columns with my previous data set, will the same measaures apply to my new data if I use any of the following methods that you suggested? Assuming that the datasets have the same table names.

Thanks!

Ashley

[Cmcmahan · Accepted solution]

Exactly correct.  As long as the form of the data is the same (same columns, same tables, etc) and it's just the actual values that change, any measures, calculated columns, or data transformations apply the same way.

It's like if you went to your original data and changed a 10 to an 11, or deleted a random entry.  You'd still expect PowerBI to work on that updated file.  This is the same idea, but you're changing a lot more values at once.