I need some help understanding data refresh and PowerBI data sources

[DanielHdez9]

Hello everyone!

I am a bit of a rookie in the whole power BI environment, and this is my first post, so please spare with me if completely mistaken. My account is a Pro trial. I have created a report in Power Bi Desktop and then published it to my workspace in app.powerbi.com.

I am developing a webpage using Python (Flask) on the backend and Angular on the frontend, and I'm currently embebbing a PowerBI iframe on my webpage. My current data flow goes like this:

1. User interacts with my website and fills some forms.
2. My backend generates insight based on that user input.
3. My backend saves that info on a Azure SQL Server database.
4. PowerBI reads that data from Azure SQL Server and builds a useful report.

One important feature is the real-time insight, so I'm interested on running the whole data flow in seconds.

Steps 1 to 3 are working perfectly fine in real time, but I'm having some trouble on the step 4, refresing the data sources and updating the PowerBI report. (I can reload with javascript the iframe object on the website, the trouble is actually having PowerBI reload the data source).

I have tried using the "Import Mode" and also "DirectQuery", but I can't automatically update the info. If I use PowerBI Desktop I can click the update button to refresh the data, but on the embebbed web version there is no update button, and I don't really know how to proceed right now. I even tried switching the data source from the database to csv files on Azure Blob Storage, but I have the same exact problem, so I would prefer to use the Azure SQL Database.

If someone could give me some advice I would be really grateful, it's getting pretty frustrating.

Thank you!

[devesh_gupta · Accepted solution]

@DanielHdez9 Ensure that your Power BI dataset in Power BI Service is set up with the correct data source (Azure SQL Server) and is configured for scheduled refreshes. 

In Power BI Service, navigate to your workspace, go to the dataset settings, and set up a scheduled refresh. This allows Power BI to periodically fetch updated data from your Azure SQL Server.

If you find this insightful, please provide a Kudo and accept this as a solution.

[devesh_gupta]

@DanielHdez9 As you kudoed this reply, can you also accept it as a solution so that other users can find it more easily.