Can report and dataset refresh dates be extracted using the scanner API?

Hi Dragon496,

the Scanner API doesn’t currently expose dataset/report refresh details such as last refresh time, refresh history, or whether refresh has been disabled. It’s designed more for inventory, lineage, and metadata discovery, so refresh-related operational data isn’t included in the scan output. 

To achieve what you’re looking for, the recommended approach is to combine the Scanner API with Power BI REST APIs:

You can continue using the Scanner API to build your inventory (workspaces, reports, datasets), and then enrich that dataset using refresh-specific APIs.

• Use the Scanner API to extract and store Dataset IDs across your tenant.
• For each dataset, call the Get Refresh History API to retrieve:
  • Refresh start/end time
  • Status (Success/Failed)
  • Error details (useful for identifying failures/disabled scenarios)
• Optionally use dataset-level APIs to pull additional metadata if needed.

At scale, this usually looks like a two-step process:

1. Run your existing Scanner API process to maintain a catalog of artifacts.
2. Use that catalog to drive incremental calls to the refresh history endpoint and store the results in your database for tracking and historical analysis.

Since you mentioned a large number of datasets, do plan for API throttling limits—batching requests and implementing retry logic will help when working with Admin APIs.

For reference:

• https://learn.microsoft.com/rest/api/power-bi/datasets/get-refresh-history
• https://learn.microsoft.com/rest/api/power-bi/admin/workspace-info-get-scan-result
• https://learn.microsoft.com/rest/api/power-bi/admin

Also, there isn’t a direct flag via the Scanner API to indicate “refresh disabled due to failures,” so this typically needs to be inferred from refresh history + failure patterns rather than a single field.

Thanks,

Prashanth