Hi @robm135 ,
When you use report server, the following restrictions apply when using scheduled refreshes, which are by design.
Not all Power BI Reports can have a scheduled refresh plan created on them. The following is a list of Power BI Reports that you Can't create a scheduled refresh plan.
- Your report contains one or more Analysis Services data sources, which use a live connection.
- Your report contains one or more data sources, which use DirectQuery.
- Your report does not contain any data source. For example, data is manually entered via Enter Data or a report contains only static content like images, text, etc.
- Your report contains dynamic data sources. For example, data from the report is used to dynamicaly build the name of a server, the name of a database, or a URL address to fetch contents. Only data sources that are detected when the report was uploaded can be refreshed.
In addition to the above list, there are specific scenarios with data sources in import mode, for which you cannot create refresh plans.
- If a File or Folder data source is used and the file path is a local path (e.g. C:\Users\user\Documents), then a refresh plan cannot be created. The path must be a path the report server can connect to like a network share. For example, \myshare\Documents.
- If data source can be connected using only OAuth (e.g. Facebook, Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.), then cache refresh plan cannot be created. At the moment, RS does not support OAuth authentication for any data source whether it is for paginated, mobile or Power BI reports.
The features of Power BI Report Server are not as comprehensive as those of Power BI Report Service. You can refer to the following to compare the differences between the two before.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/compare-report-server-service
Have the data source scheduled refresh abilities of PBIRS been improving over time?
Microsoft engineers will continue to modify and improve it, Report Service will be updated once every 3 months or so, you can pay attention to the subsequent version of the update. In addition, you can create an idea. Engineers will also pay attention to the Idea.
refer：https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/
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Best Regards
Lucien
