Parameters of Incremental Refresh not overridden in service

[Anonymous]

I want to add an incremental refresh to my report.  I follow all the steps listed here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/admin/service-premium-incremental-refresh

I then publish to service and refresh the dataset.  My report only shows data within the parameters I set in Manage Parameters on PBI desktop. Service is supposed to override these parameters, load all data, then only load new data upon subsequent refreshes.   What am I missing?

[lbendlin]

you're missing the part of the documentation that states that incremental refresh has three phases.

Phase 1: Every time (EVERY TIME*) when you publish from Power BI Desktop to the service your incremental refresh setup on the service gets destroyed and replaced with the data that is governed by the RangeStart and RangeEnd Power Query parameters

Phase 2: On the next refresh the Power BI Service loads the ENTIRE data according to the "keep x years"  etc setting you specified in Power BI Desktop, and starts building the partitions as it sees fit (not what you told it to do)

Phase 3: On the next (and subsequent) refreshes the actual incremental refresh is happening, only touching the "hot" partitions, and shifting older data to the "warm"  and "cold" partitions as time progresses.

The only way to know that incremental refresh is actually working is to observe the partitions and their last modified date via any XMLA endpoint client that can interpret the partition DMV.

* Unless you use ALM Toolkit and are careful as to which meta data changes you are synching into the service.

[Anonymous]

Thank you.  I agree with these steps and have followed them.  After I complete step 3 and running multiple refreshes, my report on service is still only showing the data between the RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters.  Is this normal?  

[MB26]

hi @Anonymous , I'm facing the same issue. Were you able to fix this?

[lbendlin]

No, it is not. Have you checked the partitions?

[Anonymous]

No, as I'm not sure how to do that.

[lbendlin]

Here's one way of doing it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCfkEmvNGNc

Make sure to connect to the  service dataset, not the local one.

You can also use SSMS.  Find the service URL, and then connect to it as a Analysis Services source in SSMS.  Find the "table"  for your data source, right click it and click "Partitions" 

Here's an example

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Incremental-Refresh-with-Slow-Changing-Source-Data/b...