Email Subscription - Report Preview - Outdated

[umali]

The report preview within the email generated from a subscribed Power BI Dashboard shows outdated data, compared to the PDF attachment. In all scenarios, the attached PDF report is correct.

Some days, the email preview completely matches the attached PDF and some days, it does not.

The dashboard is pointed to a direct lake semantic model ( with an auto refresh of schema changes).

Would you know how to fix this issue?

[v-saisrao-msft]

Hi @umali,

Have you had a chance to review the solution we shared by @Natarajan_M @cengizhanarslan @MohdZaid_? If the issue persists, feel free to reply so we can help further.

Thank you.

[MohdZaid_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @umali  , 

This issue can happen in Microsoft Power BI because the email preview and the attached PDF in a subscription are generated in different ways. The preview image that appears inside the email is usually taken from a cached snapshot of the dashboard or report in Power BI Service. Because it relies on cached visuals, it may sometimes show data from a previous refresh. On the other hand, the PDF attachment is generated at the time the subscription runs, so it pulls the latest available data from the semantic model. That is why the PDF often shows the correct and updated data while the email preview occasionally looks outdated.

A common way to reduce this issue is to make sure there is enough time between the dataset refresh and when the subscription email is sent. If the subscription runs immediately after the refresh, the dashboard tiles might not have finished updating their cache yet. Scheduling the email subscription a bit later (for example, 20–30 minutes after the refresh) usually allows the visuals to update properly so the preview and the PDF match. Another option is to subscribe to the report instead of the dashboard, since report subscriptions tend to render more consistently with the latest data.

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Thanks for being part of the discussion!!!

[umali]

Thank you @mohdzaid

We scheduled the update of the semantic model schema & then after 15 mins, we scheduled the subscribed email. Since then the report preview matches the attached PDF.

[MohdZaid_]

Most Welcome @umali  , 

Happy to resolve this issue !🤗

[cengizhanarslan]

1. Subscription timing
Make sure the subscription runs after the model refresh finishes. Also I would suggest adding a buffer like 10-15 mins.

2. Direct Lake refresh behavior
With Direct Lake models, changes may appear immediately in the model but report caches may update slightly later, which can affect snapshot previews. You can sometimes reduce this by ensuring the model refresh pipeline completes before the subscription runs.

[Natarajan_M]

Hi @umali , I suspect this is related to the dashboard tiles cache issue. Could you delay the email subscription by 5 - 15 minutes after the semantic model refreshes, and then check the PDF and image snapshot?

Thanks 
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