PowerBI Desktop Auto Refresh

[shawnleblanc]

Hi, I'm new to this community and hoping someone can help!  I have a PBIX file that I want to auto refresh on the dektop application.  I have published the dataset and report to PowerBI Services and scheduled a daily auto refresh but I have a requirement to also keep the PBIX file current.  For "audit trail" reasons, I want to keep a weekly version of the PBIX file.  I have created a flow in Power Automate to take the PBIX file and copy to new "audit trail" location and add current date to the file name.  This flow will run once per week but is not very helpful if the desktop file can't be auto refreshed.  From the research that I've done, I don't think auto refresh in PowerBI Desktop is possible.  Is there a work around that anyone has found for this? 

My only other option is to run the script in Power Automate to copy the dataset & report from PowerBI Services and create a copy on the existing workspace but I don't like that option as it makes the workspace very congested with a huge number of files.  Any ideas?  Thanks again for any replies that I get. 

[shawnleblanc]

Thanks for your quick reply!  I really appreciate it!  I just started Power Automate for the first time this week so I'm not very proficient at it yet.   I installed Power Automate Desktop this morning and it seems a bit more compex than the cloud version.  I was able to create a flow to copy pbix file from one location to another but I can't seem to find "how to open the file and refresh".  Do you know where I could find that? 

[Dinesh_Suranga]

@shawnleblanc 

Hi

As I think in your stage the best thing is record the steps.

Please watch following video. It will give you an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpwuc8h3Q3E

Thank you.

[Dinesh_Suranga]

@shawnleblanc 

Hi, 

You can use Power Automate Desktop to this.

ex. You have PBIX file in a specific folder. You craete Power Automate Desktop flow to run every week, Go to that folder ,  select latest PBIX report ,Create a copy with week no or date, Open PBIX report, Refresh data, Save and close. from next week it will run automatically in this way.

Thank you.