Refresh Power BI Dashboard from One Drive for Business data sources

[jagostinhoCT]

Hello,

Used Power BI Desktop to model some data sources (XLSX) saved on a One Drive for Business folder.

Then Published it and created a Dashboard on Power BI Service.

Also, created a public Embeded Code.

How can I get it so that when the XLSX files on the cloud are modified the Embeded link is updated also.

Currently I need to open Power BI Desktop and Refresh. Then Publish and overwrite.

Thank you.

Joaquim

[jester121 · Accepted solution]

Unless you have Pro licenses, you'll only be able to auto-refresh your data automatically 1x per day, and you select only a 6 hour window during which the update runs. 

To set it up, you need to go into Edit Query -> Advanced Editor, and change the Source line from pointing to your local C: drive to use the Sharepoint/Onedrive URL -- here's an example from one of my dashboards, which hits n XLSX data file that gets saved to my Onedrive for Business folder every night:

Source = Excel.Workbook(Web.Contents("https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/<my O365 ID>/Documents/path/path/path/dates.xlsx"), null, true),

This works great for CSV and other flat files as well.

Then on app.powerbi.com, go into the Dataset properties and you'll be able to set it to auto refresh and select the rough time to run (I use 6A-12P).

[jester121 · Accepted solution]

Unless you have Pro licenses, you'll only be able to auto-refresh your data automatically 1x per day, and you select only a 6 hour window during which the update runs. 

To set it up, you need to go into Edit Query -> Advanced Editor, and change the Source line from pointing to your local C: drive to use the Sharepoint/Onedrive URL -- here's an example from one of my dashboards, which hits n XLSX data file that gets saved to my Onedrive for Business folder every night:

Source = Excel.Workbook(Web.Contents("https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/<my O365 ID>/Documents/path/path/path/dates.xlsx"), null, true),

This works great for CSV and other flat files as well.

Then on app.powerbi.com, go into the Dataset properties and you'll be able to set it to auto refresh and select the rough time to run (I use 6A-12P).

[jagostinhoCT]

Hi @jester121

Thank you for the reply.

I also found that another way to get the updates immediately pushed to the dashboard is by refreshing first on Power BI Desktop and then Publishing it (w/ overwrite) to the Power BI Service.

Kind regards,

J

[jester121 · Accepted solution]

If it's just a data refresh you're looking for once the OD4B CSV file has changed, there's no need for all that --

From the main page at app.powerbi.com, on the left side/bottom is your Datasets. Click the little pips next to it and hit Refresh Now. You'll see the spinning wheel, and once it stops refresh the dashboard or report, and you'll see the new data reflected.

[jagostinhoCT]

@jester121

That's excellent!

Thanks a lot.

How did I miss that?

[jester121]

There's tons of stuff like that -- Power BI learning curve is very steep, but the views on the way up are rewarding.