Automated backups: Can I switch data source if the main one is empty?

[AlexS2023]

Hi all,

Need some help conceptually more than anything... We get a daily download of data which supersedes the previous day's data (in a SharePoint List) and this feeds our Power BI reports. It works fine, but I'm concerned what would happen if there was an error with the daily download: theoretically, we could replace the old data with Nothing, and all the reports would show a gap.

I'm wondering, is there a way to tell PBI to check that there is data in the main data source, and if not, connect to a backup table instead?

Or maybe should I be doing comparative operations before the old data is moved to backup?

How do you handle backups?

TIA 🙂

[christinepayton]

Is the original source a SharePoint list? Why not connect directly to the list? 

I'm not sure what you mean by show a gap though, you mean someone would upload an empty file? Or forget an upload? Is it using the folder connector for multiple files or is it a single file right now?

[lbendlin]

General Power BI Service philosophy is to only swap in the "new" data if the refresh is successful.  That way there will be no gaps on failure. 

Exception:  Incremental refresh with meta data change.