Forum Discussion
Is There Effective Alternative to Incremental Refresh for Dynamics 365 Business Central Data Source
In that scenario, the Historical + Current split approach is probably the most practical option. A common workaround with standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs is to keep older fiscal years static and refresh only the recent months more frequently, then append the queries together in Power BI.
RangeStart and RangeEnd may still provide some benefit if the Business Central endpoint accepts the date filter, but since query folding is limited, they usually should not be relied on as a fully effective Incremental Refresh solution for large tables like Value Entries or Item Ledger Entries.
For large BC tables, keeping the queries as simple as possible helps the most. Filtering by posting date early, splitting data by year or period, removing unnecessary columns and avoiding heavy Power Query transformations before filtering can help reduce refresh times.
I have seen practical implementations where separate yearly queries or an “Archive + Active” approach were used to keep refresh times manageable without Fabric or SQL staging, though they are not available to me currently to share them. While more manual operationally, it is currently one of the more realistic approaches when limited to standard Business Central APIs and Power BI only.
You can go through below MS docs and discussions though:
Configure incremental refresh for Power BI semantic models - Power BI | Microsoft LearnWeb Service Performance (OData, API, and SOAP) - Business Central | Microsoft Learn
Solved: Business Central and Power BI loading data - Microsoft Fabric Community
Business Central and Power BI: What can you do to make it better?
Community SupportHi sumitmanjarme , Hope you are doing well. Kindly let us know if the issue has been resolved or if further assistance is needed. Your input could be helpful to others in the community.
Hi v-hashadapu ,
Thank you for following up.
The issue is still not resolved. My main objective is to implement Incremental Refresh effectively for Dynamics 365 Business Central data in Power BI.
Since the Business Central connector does not appear to support query folding for many standard APIs/OData endpoints, I am looking for guidance on the recommended approach to implement Incremental Refresh in this scenario.
Could you please advise on:
The best practice for implementing Incremental Refresh with Business Central data sources.
Whether RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters can be pushed to Business Central APIs/OData endpoints.
Any supported methods to achieve efficient incremental loading without custom extensions.
Recommended approaches for large tables such as Value Entries, Item Ledger Entries, and G/L Entries.
Any detailed guidance, examples, or Microsoft recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.