Forum Discussion
Refreshing with PowerBI Free user
I'm a bit confused because of licensing of PowerBI and Personal Gateway.
I have MSSQL Express with some data. I have PowerBI Desktop with some reports. I have account on app.powerbi.com, reports are Published (manually from PowerBI desktop). So far so good.
I have Power Bi Gateway personal installed, which after login says "Connected: You're good to go!" (and windows credentials are given too). So I'm... good to go, but data is not being refreshed.
When I click in web PowerBI, Datasets -> Schedule refresh, it says "This dataset contains on-premises data sources. To schedule data refresh, try Power BI Pro for 60 days, or contact your Office 365 tenant administrator to purchase Power BI Pro."
So it is quite clear that it is not free, but some says it is.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/
"Consume content that is scheduled to refresh:
FREE: Daily
PRO: Up to 8 times per day"
"Access on-premises data using the Data Connectivity Gateways (Personal and Data Management)"
FREE: no
PRO: yes
I'm not sure how to understand those points. What is "consume", and "access on-premises data". I don't need more data then it is being published on reports, so I'm not expecting BI server to dynamically connect with my MSSQL to dig something more.
So, do I have to pay for automatic daily reports refresh, or just doing something wrong?
10 Replies
Qbota Below is the summary for you.
When you go to Dataset -> Schedule Refresh you're trying to setup automatic schedule refresh which is not free and requires Pro account.
If you go Dataset, click three dots and click Refresh Now that is free and doesn't require Pro account.
In short, setting up schedule refresh requires Pro account, doing manual refresh is free.
If you have a report that is using DirectQuery feature (connecting live to on-prem data source) then it requires Pro account, in power bi desktop if you choose Import then you don't require Pro account.
Hope it is clear now.
As of oct 9 2016, you CANNOT refresh even manually with Power BI Free
I spent a full day (oh yeah) installing/uninstalling Personal/Enterprise gateway.
In all attempts, REFRESH NOW or SCHEDULE REFRESH gets me to a page saying:
This dataset contains on-premises data sources. To schedule data refresh, try Power BI Pro for 60,00 days, or contact your Office 365 tenant administrator to purchase Power BI Pro.
Gosh a just RE-READ for the Nth time the product comparison page. Did not see it before but it is clear.
Only the pro can Access on-premise data source (schedule AND manuel)
Data Refresh
Consume content that is scheduled to refresh Daily Hourly Consume streaming data in your dashboards and reports 10K rows/hour 1M rows/hour Consume live data sources with full interactivity • Access on-premises data using the Data Connectivity Gateways (Personal and Data Management) • I have the same issue. I am working with a new customer and when i had all ready and try to configure the gateway to "refresh now", the message you text is shown. This is crazy, please don't remove refresh now from free content, i can lose so much customers because of this.
I read this change and now can't with on premise gateway, but at least let us use the personal gateway as free.
This is actually confusing and does not answer the question.
Accessing on Premise data from the desktop version should never cost the end user if they are connecting to
their own SQL Server Analysis Server which is already licensed with Microsoft for end users to use
We do this all the time using Excel which has almost all the same features as PowerBi.This seems to be muddying the picture more than it is helping.
The issue that is confusing things is if you are using a gateway or not.
You need a Office 365 account to do schedule refresh.
This service is totally free and applicable in free account.
Get an office365 trial account and then sign in to windows as well powerbi schedule refresh authenication.
I have an office 365 license. However Refresh schedule option is not accessible?
