Refresh Power BI Report On-Demand

[RKM]

Apologies I'm novice and really getting a big pain to get around the topic of On-Demand Refresh in Power BI Report.

We use On-premises SQL Server and we have Power BI Pro and we got a WorkSpace where Max. 48 Scheduled Refresh is possible per day, for my DataSet (All tables are on 'import' mode). That's appearing as - not meeting user requirement. They clearly mentioned, that they need On-Demand Refresh and not like only 48 times in a day, with every 30mins interval. I initially tried using Power Automate (a trial to just see if it is useful) and added button on my report to invoke refresh, which worked,

but I then realized, whenever someone triggering refresh button once, it is actually counted as 'one' from the Quota of 48. i.e. in 2 -3 hours if users are hitting refresh 15 - 20 times then, Schedule refresh for that many times are subtracted already and from Evening onward my Schedule Refresh no longer working because total 48 hit is done.

We are frustrated with this behavious of Power and now users asking if On-Demand refresh no possible, should we throw power Bi out use?..... Not sure what can be done. I came across many article here and there, using PowerShell this that... most annoying thing is too many complexities on Role and Licenses etc etc...

Is there any simple guideline that novice like me can go through, to understand what should be my next steps, please? We want user to be able to click 'refresh' and dataset should be refreshed. That's all.

I also thought about DirectQuery instead of import but then, DirectQuery doesn't allow incremental which means main Transaction table to be pulled fully everytime which will be very slow.

Your help will be highly appreciated. please...

[v-lionel-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @RKM ,

48 times refers to the upper limit of the number of scheduled refreshe that can be performed per day, and there is no limit on the number of manual refreshe (on-demand refresh).

Data refresh 

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.

[amitchandak]

@RKM , Direct query will only pull required data, not full. In this case that is a more suitable option.

Or you can create a hybrid model. where few tables can be direct and a few are in import mode.

[RKM]

My Users made it clear - They need on demand 'Refresh' i.e. they want to make a Button Click and refresh, as and when they need to. So let's stick to that.... i.e. I want to have a button and allow users (overall) to be able to refresh Dataset much more than just 48times.

But out of that topic, I'd also like to understand this line... "Direct query will only pull required data, not full"

this is something I would like to understand, so, are you saying, DirectQuery Means, it will compare what it fetched last time and then will pull only changed records to build the latest view or something else?