Forum Discussion
Semantic model refresh failure notification across tenant
- 1 year ago
Hi balafbm ,
No, there isn’t a built-in tenant-wide refresh-failure alert in the Power BI service that automatically notifies a central set of users. To achieve this at scale (100+ datasets), you’d typically use Power Automate (Flow) or a custom script that polls the Power BI REST API and notifies a distribution list when any dataset fails.
Recommended approach: Power Automate flow (tenant-wide monitoring) What you’ll do
Create a service account (or use a service principal/App registration with appropriate permissions) that can read all workspaces and datasets.
Build a Flow that runs on a schedule and checks refresh history for all datasets in all workspaces.
If any dataset has a failed refresh in the recent window, email a distribution list (or post to Teams) with details.
Suggested flow outlineTrigger: Recurrence (e.g., every 60 minutes)
Action: List Groups (Power BI) to get all workspaces the account has access to
For each Group:
Action: List Datasets (Power BI) to enumerate datasets in that workspace
For each Dataset:
Action: Get Dataset Refresh History (Power BI) and look at the most recent refreshes
If the latest refresh (or any within the window) has Status = Failed:
Collect details: workspace name, dataset name, refresh start time, failure reason (if available)
If any failures were found:
Action: Send an email (Outlook/Office 365) to your important recipients with a compiled list of failing datasets
Optional: Persist a small log (e.g., in SharePoint, Dataverse, or a blob) to avoid sending duplicates for the same failure windowPlease mark this post as solution if it helps you. Appreciate Kudos.
Hello balafbm ,
No, there is no native centralised solution.
Either you do what you don't want to do 🙂 and for all new semantic models, you put that in a procedure to add yourself as a person to be notified.
You also have the ‘Refresh Summary’ screen in the admin portal, but it's up to you to monitor it, as you won't receive any notifications.
Otherwise, you'll need to use the PowerBI Rest API with PowerShell / Azure Function or Power Automate.
Please feel free to give me a kudo and accept my answer as the solution if it suits you.
Have a nice day,
Vivien