Looking for Tips on Storing Data

[Justair07]

Hi,

I know a lot of you will read this question and suggest that I connect directly to the source db. Unfortunently, that is not an option in this case, yet.

I'm new to Power BI so I'm not even sure if this is possible. I have a report from our ERP system (SAP) that will run on a schedule every day. The report will be for the previous day. So every day the report will automaticlly (replace and) save in a local folder in an Excel format. The report will always have the same name and it will replace the previous days report.

Is it possibly for Power BI to pull the reports data daily so I can create dashboards with it? Does Power BI actually store and save data in a table?

If no, my other option was to run a schedued macro from Access to fetch the data and store it in a table for Power BI to pull from. I prefer to eleiminate the middle man (or in this case middle men).

Any tips and tricks are much appreciated.

Thank you,

- Justin

[Brysonds · Accepted solution]

You can point Power BI to the local file that is being updated each day. Whenever you refresh the data in Power BI, it will read whatever is in the excel file. You can refresh manually from the desktop client and push the update to the web service, or you can schedule an automatic refresh fro the web service. 

Once you have connected Power BI to an import source (like excel), the data is contained in memory and stores the table in a compressed format within the Power BI file. Refreshing the data simply replaces the table with the new data.

If you are trying to build history in Power BI, but not in the source file, I don't believe this can be done.

[Justair07]

@Brysonds Thats exactly the answer I needed. Thank you. It looks like I will have to go the middleman route with Access so I can keep a history.

Thank you!