From PPU to Fabric - Incremental Refresh

[Filip_analyst]

Hey,

I am about to migrate a workspace from a PPU license to Fabric Shared Capacity. The problem is, one of the semantic model in PPU has incremental refresh configured. 
Also, in official documentation I can find: "Any workspace migrated from a PPU environment to a non-PPU environment (such as Premium or shared environments) must have its datasets refreshed before use.". I confirm as for a standard semantic models when I moved them from a PPU to Fabric, there was an initial error on a report hence manual/ automatic refresh was needed. 
But what about a semantic model with incremental. When I will move this model to Fabric Capacity and click "refresh", I assume whole history will be reloaded right ? Or only partitions ? 
Would be grateful for tips!

[Poojara_D12]

Hi @Filip_analyst 

When you migrate a workspace from a Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license to a Fabric Shared Capacity, any semantic model (dataset) that has incremental refresh configured requires special attention. Microsoft’s official guidance notes that semantic models must be refreshed after migration from PPU to any non-PPU environment (including shared or Premium capacities) before they can be used. This also applies to models with incremental refresh. However, it's important to clarify that clicking "refresh" after migration will not reload the full data history, even for incremental refresh models. Power BI maintains partition definitions during the migration, so only the incremental partitions—i.e., the ones configured to refresh dynamically based on your defined policy (e.g., last 1 day, last 7 days)—will be refreshed. The historical partitions (older data) remain unchanged unless the policy itself is modified or the model is forcefully refreshed in full (e.g., by disabling and re-enabling incremental refresh). That said, after the workspace is moved, an initial refresh is required to reinitialize and validate the model under the new capacity context. As best practice, ensure the gateway and data source credentials are revalidated post-migration, and monitor the refresh history closely during the first post-migration refresh to catch any errors related to capacity change, partition access, or credential mapping.

[Filip_analyst]

Thank you for a quick answer. 
Ok, so based on your reply if we refresh only partitions we will not lose any history data right during migration  ? 

[Poojara_D12 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Filip_analyst 

Yes, that's correct—you will not lose any historical data during the migration from a Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) workspace to a Fabric Shared Capacity, even if your semantic model uses incremental refresh. The migration process preserves the existing partitions in the dataset, including the historical ones that were previously loaded and stored. When you perform the initial refresh after migration, only the incremental partitions—those defined by your refresh policy (such as the most recent 7 days or 1 month)—will be updated. The historical partitions remain intact and are not overwritten unless you explicitly change the incremental refresh policy or perform a full refresh by disabling and re-enabling incremental refresh. Therefore, as long as you don't modify the refresh policy post-migration, your history remains preserved, and only the most recent slices of data will be queried and updated during the refresh. Still, it's important to ensure that the data source credentials and gateway configurations are properly set up in the new capacity, as any failure in these settings could impact refresh behavior.