Share your thoughts on Automatic Page Refresh aka APR (Preview feature)

[MiguelMartinez]

It's been almost 2 months since the release of Automatic Page Refresh (APR) and as we work really hard to improve this new real-time capability in Power BI, we would love to hear your feedback and opinions to help us decide what comes next and how to improve this functionality in general.

Reply to this post letting us know what you think so we can continue to work on improving real-time capabilities in Power BI.

More APR info:

• Documentation
• Announcement Blog Post

[venkb]

Hello, do you know when the refresh for import mode will be available at a smaller frequency than the current 30 minute schedule refresh limitations?

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @venkb . There should be some news very soon about this. Stay tuned!

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have been looking at ways to automatically update dashboard visuals when a change happens to the excel file, holding the data, in sharepoint. From research I found out about the APR feature, so went to File > Options and Setting > Options > Preview Features, but then couldn't find the "Automatic Page Refresh" to activate it. My account is a pro user and my understanding it should be there, can you kindly advise?

Thanks.

[MiguelMartinez]

Totally missed this @Anonymous . Most likely it is because your dataset is import so it's not supported for that type (yet) Stay tunned for news very soon about this.

[OmriA]

As far as I can tell, the change detection measure query doesn't respect RLS. Is this by design?
Adding RLS support will prevent unnecessary queries & renderings for many use cases.
Perhaps the best thing to do will be to add this as an option since there might be situations where ignoring RLS is the right thing to do.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi @OmriA , thanks for reaching out. When you say RLS you mean the one in DQ source? It should respect that when the data is queried but the chnage detection measure always uses the authors creds to calculate and detect. So yes, there might be situations where the measure changes but the visuals for specific user don't. That is by design because of several reasons. Is this the RLS you talk about or did I miss that completely?

[OmriA]

I meant RLS implemented in Power BI using roles.

For example:
I have a table in an SQL server DB. The table has 2 columns [User] & [Score] and the following data tuples:
("User1", 10),
("User2", 20),
("User3", 30)

I'm connecting to this table using DQ without any manipulations.

I have a role, implemented in Power BI Desktop, with the following DAX filter on the table: MyTable[User] = "User1".

My change detection measure is MAX(MyTable[Score]).

If I'm viewing the model under the role, I expect the change detection measure to fold the query:
select max([Score])
from MyTable
where [User] = 'User1'

Instead, I see that the quey being folded lack the predicate:
select max([Score])
from MyTable

So, if I'll update User1's grade from 10 to 25, the change detection measure will return the same result, 30, and the page will not be refreshed.

Obviously, I can circumstance this in various ways like using CONCATENATEX in my change detection measure, creating a last change timestamp in the source (if I have permissions), etc...

But I think that the change detection query should respect roles implemented in Power BI.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

This is really cool. As an architect, we were always thinking if connecting to Data Sources via Direct Query mode is good or not considering we have a lot of visuals sending in queries all the time at set refresh internal which may slow down or break the source system. This feature gives us the flexibility to control that.

However, few disappointments. Why it is enabled only for Power BI Premium considering its Direct Query mode? I think when we have our solutions running on Direct Query mode, the features enabled for Premium should also be applicable for Pro license as well. Also, when working in a bigger organization setup with multiple Power BI teams, we often don't have access to Admin Portal. So, changing a small setting in Admin Portal requires a lot of time and a lengthy approval process. I feel this kind of setting should be enabled at the Workspace level by Workspace Admins to overwrite settings at the Report level or Page level.

Thanks and Regards,

Bidesh Sarker

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi Bidesh and thank you so much for the feedback.

We understand the frustration regarding this being available only in Premium and the difficulties on enabling it even if you have Premium capacity availability. For now we have no plans on changing the licensing because of different reasons (premium and shared work in different ways under the hood allowing for this feature to work) bur regarding how easy this can enabled, that we can influence. The only reason this is turned off by default is that feature is in preview. Once we GA, it will be on by default with more conservative intervals (the defaults we have today) and capacity admins can turn it off.

Thanks again and please stay tunned since we have more news coming down the road for both Premium and automatic page refresh/change detection. Keep the feedback coming and head to ideas.powerbi.com to voice these requests and see how many other users can up vote it so it gets more visibility.

[HVenter]

@MiguelMartinez "We understand the frustration regarding this being available only in Premium and the difficulties on enabling it even if you have Premium capacity availability"

We're using Embedded capacity (paid through Azure) which seems to be forgotton a lot of times when it comes to new functionality - this is not available via Embedded either. I'm hoping we can work towards getting feature sets across premium and embedded paid capacities more aligned.

[MiguelMartinez]

@HVenter it should be available in embedded capacities. If not, this is bug so please submit a supprt ticket and let us know the details so we can troubleshoot. Thanks for the info. As a general rule and as part of process we do check for embedded support when it makes sense, like in this case. Please keep us updated and I will do the same in case I have news on our side.

[Anonymous]

This is a great feature ever. You guys did a good job. I've been waiting for this for a long time and I've been doing workaround on it. My only comment and personal opinion are that it is unacceptable to do not have this feature for azure analysis services live connection. Why spend so much money in a database as azure analysis services if, in the end, the users can not have a report running with live data? We still need to press F5 to get new data even though the dataset is up to date. We still not have a proper end to end solution for live data.

[ranbeermakin]

Hi @Anonymous 

Have you checked this yet? 

https://bigintsolutions.com/2019/03/29/refresh-power-bi-report-every-min-and-show-on-a-tv/

In action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pacBkMqMjDQ

This should solve your pain and frustration. 🙂

Best

-Ranbeer

[syasmin25]

I am having trouble getting the automatic page refresh. Can someone please tell me if I am doing something wrong here?
I have the preview feature on however, it does not show up under the formatting icon. We do have premium.

[MiguelMartinez]

Of course @syasmin25 ,

A couple of questions first:

1. Are you setting it up in Desktop or the service?

2. Are you connecting to a DirectQuery source? It will only be available if you do so

Let us know and we'll get back to you ASAP

[syasmin25]

I was setting it up in Desktop. I didn't use Direct Query. I will work on restructuring it then, thank you so much!

[MiguelMartinez]

Happy to help! And like I said before, keep the feedback coming 😃

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Ranbeer for your reply. Unfortunately, this is a type of workaround that I mentioned but it is not possible in my company due to restricting security policy in the local machines. I'm working in the huge chemical industry the governance will not accept this as a solution. But I'm still open for another option 🙂

[michaeldaynes]

In theory this is a great new feature but its use is limited as the Power BI service limits the number of refreshes and it is only available in Direct Query mode.  I would like the feature to be enabled for Import mode even if the requency is every half an hour.  The Imported dataset can be updated via a schedule but the report is not automatically refreshed which appears to be a flaw.

[MiguelMartinez]

Hi Michael, thanks for the feedback. For the scenarios that we created this for, import for now doesn't make sense. Can you expand a bit more on what the use case is for import? Do you have an import dataset that refreshes often in some way or you just want the option to be avaiable to refresh by report page? Thanks again for the feedback!