Forum Discussion
Dataset refresh via Power Automate Flow - clarifications
Hi mollycat ,
Unfortunately, there’s no sneaky way around this one in Premium capacity, anything that refreshes your dataset via Power Automate (or any other API) does count toward the 48-per-day limit for that dataset, even if you trigger it manually with a button inside the report. The only refreshes that don’t count are when you (or someone with permission) click REFRESH NOW in the Power BI Service. The good news is you can add a Power Automate button in the report so end users can kick off a refresh themselves it just means each click will still eat into that 48-refresh daily quota. If you really need more than 48 automated/API refreshes a day, the only real workaround today is to go through the XMLA endpoint, which doesn’t have the same cap.
More details here in Microsoft’s official documentation: Data refresh in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Hope that clears things up. If the above solution works for you, please accept it as the solution so that other community members with similar issues can benefit.
Regards,
Akhil.
Hi mollycat ,
Really glad that helped. Let me go through your follow-ups one at a time.
- Manual refresh in the App
Yep, you’ve got it right that “manual refresh” I was talking about is only something you can do in the workspace itself. Once the report is in an App, that button just isn’t there, even if the person has the right permissions and the gateway set up. - XMLA endpoint
I’ve used XMLA quite a bit. It’s super flexible and will happily get around the 48/day limit, but it’s a bit more “hands-on” than Power Automate. You’re usually writing TMSL scripts or using SSMS/PowerShell, so it’s more technical. The main things I’ve learned:
- Make sure you’ve got the right access set up for whoever’s running it.
- Keep an eye on overlapping refreshes so you don’t accidentally overload the capacity.
- Treat access carefully XMLA can do a lot more than just refresh.
If you’re fine with a bit of scripting, it’s a solid option.
- What happens if you hit the 48 limit
When you reach that cap, Power BI will just say “nope” to any more API/flow refreshes that day. The refresh fails, you’ll see it in the refresh history, and the dataset owner (plus anyone else set to get alerts) will get an email saying it failed. The error message is pretty clear that you’ve gone over the limit.
Hope that clears things up, and nice to hear you’re already digging into XMLA it’s worth the time if refresh frequency is a big deal for you.
Thanks,
Akhil.
Amazing, thank you SO much Anonymous, this is extremely helpful!