Forum Discussion
Power BI Desktop & Service Refresh
Hi,
I think I saw one of the reply that said we can't enable automatic refresh on Power BI desktop. Does this mean that we have to keep doing it manually? Or has enhancement been made to enable that? I have 2 types of data source, Excel and Salesforce.
Secondly, I created all my charts on Power BI Desktop and then publish it to Power BI Service. Whenever I need to make a change I will usually do it on Power bI Desktop. How do I get Power BI Service to pick up those changes instead of having to republish the report again? Thanks.
11 Replies
Your desktop files are simply static files. Desktop is more designed as a development tool as well. As such an auto-refresh doesn't make sense and isn't practical.
Your online environment can be connected to a gateway that can handle the refreshing. Online is designed as your consuming portal.
As for changes. If you make changes on the desktop file, there is no immediate link between that and anything you have published. When you next publish, it will overwrite whatever dataset/reports you have set up with the same name. Most of the time you are doing this with just changes to an existing files, so generally things like Dashboards often continue to work happily.
You can make changes online too. If you want to keep those changes but work on the desktop file, you have the option of selecting the Dataset online and using "Download .PBIX". This option is availalbe for any dataset that was originally created by Power BI Desktop and published.
Your online environment can be connected to a gateway that can handle the refreshing. Online is designed as your consuming portal.
> Do you mean that I need to redo my reports on Power BI service so that I can enable auto-refresh? I don't do much development work - just straightforward type of reporting
We will be making changes to the Excel files and would be nice if these are auto-updated on the report and dashboard.
Most of the time you are doing this with just changes to an existing files, so generally things like Dashboards often continue to work happily.
>the reason for a dashboard is really to report in a more aesthetic way the data in a report so doesn't make sense if changes on the report is not reflected.
You can make changes online too. If you want to keep those changes but work on the desktop file, you have the option of selecting the Dataset online and using "Download .PBIX". This option is availalbe for any dataset that was originally created by Power BI Desktop and published.
> Not sure if I understand what you mean. Do you have some documetation on what this will do?
Thanks.
