Download/Edit PBIX from report server is original version

[Kraius]

Not sure if this changed in the March release or if it's always been this way (or if i'm just crazy).  I have a lot of PBIX reports that are all set to auto-refresh on a schedule (daily) and it works great when hitting the PBIRS web server and looking at the reports.  However, the "download" and "edit in power bi" buttons load the original version of the PBIX file, which has none of the data that has changed in the weeks since it was uploaded.

Practically, this means any time you download the file, it won't look like the online version you just pulled it from.  For me, it means i have to hit a desktop PBI refresh button and go get coffee any time i want to download a pbix file and work with it, so it has the same data as the online version, but this seems like something that wasn't an issue in the past.

Is this a bug?  A normal behavior that i missed previously?

[Anonymous]

Hi Kraius,

Can you please let me know the option on how to schedule the auto refresh option once the reports are published on the reporting server. Also looking for setting an email subcription to the report baswcially a screenshot to email after the scheduled refresh is completed.

[Kraius]

No idea on the subscription part of the question as we never really played with it.  You can schedule refreshes of reports in the web GUI.  click the three dots in the corner of the report tile and go down to manage.  it will have both "data sources" and "scheduled refresh" sections that you'll need to configure to set it up to refresh 

[Jon-Heide · Accepted solution]

You're not missing anything, it's expected behavior for now.  Do up-vote it on PowerBI user voice. 

Just purely for background, when PowerBI report is uploaded, the underlying model is pulled out of the file and mounted on an internal instance of analysis services and stored seprately. The "re-stiching" of the model and report back into a single file is tricky and not currently supported. 

[Anonymous]

I have been downloading the pbix files from the Report Server at the beginning of the month to have a copy of the reports each month. And, now I have realized that the data weren´t of the download date. This behavior is not logical, is very confusing!

Is there any issue in https://ideas.powerbi.com to ask for changing that behavior?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

I couldn't find an idea to vote on, so I added this:

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/38059111-download-refreshed-repor...

[Kraius]

If you just want the modeled data out of the pbix file every month, you might be better off exporting it via a script.  Something like the below PBI_Exporter.ps1 would probably work well:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Storing-and-using-information-from-a-dynamic-data-source-us...

That way you can easily pull that exported monthly snapshot back into a PBI report if needed (it's just a CSV/XLS dump of the non-measure data in the model).  There might be newer/better ways to do this now (if your using the cloud service), but i think you're limited to options like this if using on-prem (report server) or local desktop solutions

[Anonymous]

Thanks Kraius for your message.

- - 

(When I need download intensively pbix with data updated I´ll test this solution:

https://github.com/microsoft/ReportingServicesTools/blob/master/ReportingServicesTools/ReportingServ...

)