Reports scheduled refresh in power bi service

[filiparibeiro]

Hello.

What are some of the best practices when scheduling refreshes in power bi service?

I have several reports that need to be updated many times throughout the day. What happens is that some of the best refreshing times seem to happen after working hours. There are noticeable differences between the best and the worst refresh duration for each of these reports (might take 15 min or 1hour+ to refresh).

Does having the reports in different workspaces or schedule the refresh at different times better refresh performance?? Any thing I should try?

Thanks in advance. 

[collinq · Accepted solution]

Hi @filiparibeiro ,

The real cause of time is form the data source and if you are using certain types of gateways and if you are on "regular" license or Premium. 

First, the data source - hitting refresh against the same data source in multiple reports simultaneously could cause slowness and one or more of the refreshes to fail.  For example, SharePoint only allows so many connections at a time.  If you are running multiple reports AND SharePoint is being used by lots of users at the same time, then you will encounter slowness.  Other data sources are very slow and/or have strick connection limits which can cause refreshes to take a long time.

If you are using Gateways then the userid and user permissions and method of connection might affect the refresh times as well.

And, finally, a Premium license will tend to run faster (which is part of why you pay for premium) when data is refreshed.

There are lot of things that go into a refresh but, if your data is "daily" then I would suggest refreshing during the night (or off-hours) and then you are more likely to get acceptable refresh times.