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

One thing that really frustrates me about Power BI features and their release articles is that the authors seldom include the caveat of "for Premium only" when it so applies. Would it have been that difficult to name the the subtitle in the blog article to "Automatic page refresh for DirectQuery details (preview, Premium only)"? One has to read the article so see the words, "... enabled in your premium capacity by the admin ...". And that is the ONLY mention of "premium" in that section. Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a great feature. I just wish I knew up front that it didn't apply to me before I start digging into its capabilities (like I did with Paginated Reports 😞 ).

We have been asking for something like this for a few years, so glad that it is finally available to us. But - the happiness had a short duration. We went with Power BI over competitors due to the flexibility and ease of setting up displays for our business that would allow a separation between IT and the super users at the facilities = IT provides the database access and views and the super users develop and maintain their visual displays themselves. This worked great when we updated the Power BI desktop, enabled the APR feature, updated the displays. We have an on prem gateway so published our changes there - only to find that the refresh was not happening on our display boards. We have mostly basic users and a few pro licenses for those who maintain the displays. I assume that the issue is due to not having a premium capacity - so even though we want to refesh the displays once a minute or so (like an airport status display), they only refresh every 15 minutes once published. Would be useful if the non-premium on prem gateway could refresh more often than 15 minutes - a minute would be best for us - don't have to go down to the second. Our directquery access to the database is a second or so due to a small set size, so the 15 minute limit isn't avoiding any capacity/workload issues. The price increase to premium makes Power BI a more expensive product than many competitors that provide near real time refreshes.

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.

My understanding is that it will work without Premium but obviously the number of refreshes are higher.

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.

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

36 Replies

davebi
Frequent Visitor
6 years ago
We have been asking for something like this for a few years, so glad that it is finally available to us. But - the happiness had a short duration. We went with Power BI over competitors due to the flexibility and ease of setting up displays for our business that would allow a separation between IT and the super users at the facilities = IT provides the database access and views and the super users develop and maintain their visual displays themselves. This worked great when we updated the Power BI desktop, enabled the APR feature, updated the displays. We have an on prem gateway so published our changes there - only to find that the refresh was not happening on our display boards. We have mostly basic users and a few pro licenses for those who maintain the displays.

I assume that the issue is due to not having a premium capacity - so even though we want to refesh the displays once a minute or so (like an airport status display), they only refresh every 15 minutes once published. Would be useful if the non-premium on prem gateway could refresh more often than 15 minutes - a minute would be best for us - don't have to go down to the second. Our directquery access to the database is a second or so due to a small set size, so the 15 minute limit isn't avoiding any capacity/workload issues.

The price increase to premium makes Power BI a more expensive product than many competitors that provide near real time refreshes.
- ranbeermakin
  Resolver III
  6 years ago
  Fair feedback to the product team davebi . There is an alternative to this where you can use a Google Chrome Plugin to refresh your Power BI reports every 1 min. Why don't you give it a try?
  
  Here's how to setup: https://bigintsolutions.com/2019/03/29/refresh-power-bi-report-every-min-and-show-on-a-tv/
  
  Best,
  Ranbeer
  - ToddChitt
    Super User
    6 years ago
    One thing that really frustrates me about Power BI features and their release articles is that the authors seldom include the caveat of "for Premium only" when it so applies.
    Would it have been that difficult to name the the subtitle in the blog article to "Automatic page refresh for DirectQuery details (preview, Premium only)"?
    
    One has to read the article so see the words, "... enabled in your premium capacity by the admin ...". And that is the ONLY mention of "premium" in that section.
    
    Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a great feature. I just wish I knew up front that it didn't apply to me before I start digging into its capabilities (like I did with Paginated Reports 😞 ).
- MiguelMartinez
  Microsoft Employee
  6 years ago
  Sorry for delayed response davebi. You're not alone in this feedback. We are trying really hard to find ways to make this time for Power BI Pro shorter. Surprisingly, the Premium restriction is not related to pricing but to resources and there's a lot that we need to do with this feature before we can even think about reducing the limitation on time. Thanks for the candid feedback and if you can, it would be great to have this request logged at https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas
  - davebi
    Frequent Visitor
    6 years ago
    We are looking for something like once a minute, so the resources shouldn't be an issue. We try to do the resource intensive logic in the ERP so the table lookups (direct query) from Power BI is fast. We tested with refreshing every 10 seconds on the desktops and it kept up without any issues. We are looking into upgrading to Premium but trying to justify the cost. We are still early in the visual display dashboard rollout so hard to justify the high monthly cost for two facilities. We understand that if this project gets some traction and we start adding it to multiple facilities, the need would be present for premium due to the increased processing requirements - but would also be able to spread the cost between more divisions - making the ROI worthwhile.
    
    One question about premium. We are currently negotiating the new licensing for 2020 for all microsoft products and the saleman stated 48 refreshes per day under premium using direct query. Is this old information? I would think that the APR opens up the ability to do much more than 48/day - we're planning more than 48 per hour. Just want to be sure before we make the investment.
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago
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
  Microsoft Employee
  6 years ago
  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!
v-juanli-msft
Community Support
6 years ago
Hi

Thanks for your affort.

Best Regards
Maggie
HVenter
Frequent Visitor
6 years ago
This is the final piece of functionality we need to fully move away from our other reporting technology. Great! Got it working in PBI Desktop, now if I can now just get it to work in the Service??
powerbi.com, on the page properties I have a message under data refresh "Disabled by your admin. Admin Interval 5 Minutes"
I can't find where in the Power BI Service to turn this feature on and change interval? I've checked all over the report settings, the workspace settings etc. I'm a PBI admin (we have a A1 capacity SKU - currently only used for DEV) - there is no option in the Admin portal? I've also looked in the Azure Portal but can't find any setting relating to data refresh there either?
Under PBI Admin Portal -> Capacity Settings -> we have nothing under "Power BI Premium" tab, our capacity is under the "Power BI Embedded" tab but there is no data refresh options (documention mention this functionality IS also for embedded)
Confused? Any suggestions please?
- MiguelMartinez
  Microsoft Employee
  6 years ago
  Hi Hventer, this is most likely because the feature is in preview and we have it off by default. Here you can find instryctions on how to turn it on in the Premium admin section under the datasets workload. In a nutshell, you should go to Admin Portal > Capacity Settings > Click Capacity Name >Workloads >Datasets > APR on and define min interval. Let me know if that works
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago
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
  Microsoft Employee
  6 years ago
  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
    Frequent Visitor
    6 years ago
    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.
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago
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
  Resolver III
  6 years ago
  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
    Helper V
    6 years ago
    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.
OmriA
Frequent Visitor
6 years ago
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
  Microsoft Employee
  6 years ago
  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
    Frequent Visitor
    6 years ago
    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
Not applicable
6 years ago
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
  Microsoft Employee
  5 years ago
  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.
venkb
Helper I
5 years ago
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
  Microsoft Employee
  5 years ago
  Hi venkb . There should be some news very soon about this. Stay tuned!