We have been observing that Power BI semantic models are automatically triggering a refresh immediately after being republished to the Power BI Service. In the refresh history, this is tagged as "On-demand", even though no manual action was performed. Upon reaching out to Microsoft, we received the following confirmation: “This is the expected behavior from the Power BI Service once a semantic model is republished. The behavior is by design and applies to all semantic models in Import mode (or those using auto-aggregations). This behavior has been consistent for several years, and there are currently no plans to change it in the product roadmap.” While this behavior can be beneficial in certain scenarios—particularly for smaller models that complete refreshes within seconds—it introduces challenges in the following cases: Incremental Refresh Models: In some situations, the refresh may process more data than expected, leading to longer execution times. Large or Complex Models: Models with sizes exceeding 5–10 GB or with high complexity may require several minutes to refresh, increasing resource consumption. This behavior can significantly impact capacity resources, especially in Fabric capacity-enabled workspaces, where such unintended refresh activity may lead to unnecessary resource utilization and potential performance issues. It would be highly beneficial if this behavior could be controlled at the user level or at least at the tenant level, allowing organizations to prevent unintended refreshes and better manage capacity consumption.
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