Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
9 years ago

Desktop vs Service and data refresh from source files in OneDrive for Business

I use Power BI desktop to create my reports. I have a Power BI Pro subscription. I have the data gateway running on my server.   I store all of my source data in OneDrive for Business (and the PBIX...
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jmdh's avatar
jmdh
Advocate IV
9 years ago
I have exactly the same issue and spent hours trying to understand the intricacies of "getting updates" to PowerBi services.
I have found out that excel files to be updated automatically need to be in table form and I am testing that, even if it defies the purpose of powerbi .
  • MattAllington's avatar
    MattAllington
    Community Champion
    9 years ago

    jmdh, that is very interesting.  I am interested to hear what your testing finds.  If you validate this, I think you should provide some feedback to MS about this

    • emmet63's avatar
      emmet63
      Advocate IV
      9 years ago
      Matt, this is what I have observed. In Power BI Service I can connect to OneDrive for Business files and by default refresh hourly (awesome). Using Desktop there is no direct connection like in Service > Get Data > OneDrive for Business (ODfB) so I use the Web connector like the article mentions. This bring the Excel file data in from my ODfB file but not in the same way that the Service does. In the screen shot Item A show Schedule Refresh of the PBI Desktop solution deployed to PBI Service. Refresh requires turning on "Keep your data up to date". The scheduled refreshes show under Scheduled (1) and On Demand refreshes show in the OneDrive tab (2). Item B in the screen shot shows the solution where Get Data in the PBI Service was used to directly connect to a ODfB csv file. It also shows that by default ODfB files are kept up to date hourly. Will PBI Desktop get a native OneDrive connector?


    • jmdh's avatar
      jmdh
      Advocate IV
      9 years ago

      Matt,

      Thank you. at this stage i still have no been able to have any autmatic refresh from Onedrive pro working. 

      I also have issues with the Gateway: the personal gateway didi not unsinstall properly and could not re install.
      I Installed it on a second machine and it seems to have priority on anything else (ie the on prmise gateway installed on my own machne).

       

      I XWill contact support at this stage or do you have any better idea?

      Jmdh

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable
        9 years ago

        jmdh, I've had a lot of trouble with the Gateway, too. I've installed and uninstalled it several times, always following the instructions here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-refresh-scheduled-refresh/

         

        It's a mess, though. Sometimes app.powerbi.com will tell me the gateway isn't available when I know it is. And I've seen it update the data in a report even though it says the gateway is unavailable. It's been very finicky and unreliable.