Incremental Refresh: Desktop vs. Dataflow

[tktmastr]

Hi,

I'm a bit confused by incremental refresh, and have read several posts already.

I have Power BI Pro, so I cannot use incremental refresh in dataflows, but I can in desktop, correct? What is the advantage of doing that, if my dataflows are still going to take a long time to refresh? It seems like Microsoft would want us to do this in the dataflow to use less resources.

Will incremental refresh for a dataflow be available in Premium Per User?

Edit: Or, would it make more sense to NOT use dataflows and just use incremental refresh in desktop? All of my data sources are from a web API.

Thanks

[v-deddai1-msft]

Hi @tktmastr ,

>>I have Power BI Pro, so I cannot use incremental refresh in dataflows, but I can in desktop, correct?

No, you have misunderstood the incremental refresh. It is a refresh function for power bi Premium. We just  need to configure it in Power BI desktop before publishing it to workspace in premium. There is only two refresh methods in desktop:

>>Will incremental refresh for a dataflow be available in Premium Per User?

It is a preview function now. I didn't find any support information from offical document.

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Best Regards,

Dedmon Dai

[tktmastr]

If it's not available in Pro, why does this webpage say that it is?

Incremental refresh in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

[v-deddai1-msft]

Hi @aj1973 ,

Sorry, it is available for pro license based on my test. I didn't notice the update in the incremental refresh. But it is truth that incremental refresh is available in power bi service as mentioned in 

/* Incremental refresh policies are defined in Power BI Desktop and applied when published to the Power BI service.*/ in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/admin/service-premium-incremental-refresh

Best Regards,

Dedmon Dai

[aj1973]

@tktmastr 

I have  a Pro license it is available for Dataflows

[tktmastr]

Once you save it, you'll get this message:

"This dataflow contains entities with active incremental refresh policies, which require Premium to refresh. To enable refresh, upgrade this workspace to Premium capacity. Learn more"