Forum Discussion

answeriver's avatar
answeriver
Helper IV
6 years ago
Solved

Incremental refresh

Hi all. Can somebody explain to me about this feature. I have desktop report with huge data. Every day my data is updating of new data. Refreshing full report it so much time need. Question is, do i...
Need Help
  • v-lionel-msft's avatar
    v-lionel-msft
    6 years ago

    Hi answeriver ,

     

    1. Incremental refresh is configured in Power BI Desktop and performed in Power BI Service.

    2. The values of the two parameters (RangeStart & RangeEnd) can be set to any value, as they will be overwritten by subsequent settings.

    "Then create two parameters of DateTime data type, with names of RangeStart and RangeEnd, set a default value for each too. The default value can be anything, but the name and the data type should be as mentioned here."
    "After doing this action, your data in the table will be filtered based on the default values you have set for the RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters. However, don’t worry about that. these two parameters will be overwritten with the configuration you make in the Incremental Refresh setting of the Power BI Desktop."
     
    For more, you can refer to this article, which is very detailed:
     

    Best regards,
    Lionel Chen

    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

TomMartens's avatar
TomMartens
Super User
6 years ago

Hey jmg80525 ,

 

incremental refresh will be performed at the Power BI Service level. There is no chance to have incremental refresh at the Power BI Desktop level.

 

Whenever you "republish" the pbix file that contains the incremental refresh settings, the incremental refresh cycle will restart. For this reason I recommend to use 2 pbix files one that "just" contains the queries and the data model, and of course the incremental refresh settings. The 2nd pbix contains the content the visuals etc. This file does not connect to the "original" data source but instead connects to the data source Power BI datasets:

This approach allows to separate the development of reports, pages, and visuals from the model.

 

If you have to alter the Power BI data model by adding new tables and measures you update the data model without affecting the existing partitions of tables by using the external tools ALM Toolkit or Tabular Editor, but this requires some "practice" meaning you should practice updating a model without overwritng partitions.

Adding a calculated column to a table that is partitioned by incremental refresh will of course restart the incremental refresh cycle for this table.

 

Changing a query is more difficult, until now I do not know how to "update" the Power Query part without affecting existing partitions..

 

Hopefully, this answers some of your questions.

 

Regards,

Tom

jmg80525's avatar
jmg80525
Helper II
6 years ago

@TomMartens Thank you! That's very kind of you. Here is a video that cements me how "incremental refresh" works in addition to your help.