Setting scheduled refresh for multiple time zones for the same report

[Anonymous]

Hi All, 

I have a report that I created for the North American Zone where users from different time zones use the report when their shifts start to get a summary of what happened in the previous shift. Currently I have the report to refresh at shift start and once in between. But this only works for users in CST. 

For example, morning shift starts at 7am and for ET users, when they open their report at 7am ET, their last updated data is from 3am ET which misses out on a whole bunch of data. For PT users, their last updated time would be 5am PT since it updates 7am CT as per the refresh set which again means PT users miss out on 2 hours of data. 

Also I have to mention the data source for this report is Azure SQL DB which only refreshes every 3 hours CT and the whole Azure pipeline takes about 1.5 hours to complete the refresh. Which is why the refreshes are set every 3 hours in Azure and the report refreshes are set as pictured time above. 

My question is how do I set the refreshes in Power BI to get it to refresh for all the timezone users at their shift start? Would I have to set Azure refreshes at different intervals? Any suggestions and thoughts are welcome!

Thanks in advance! 

Cheers, 

Sunayana

[collinq · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I am wondering if you think about this differently it might resolve your problem.  Think about that data side of the equation and not the users (or where the users are from).

Your limit is that the data refreshes every 3 hours.  Therefore, you can't refresh any faster than that in Power BI.  You can only set the refresh in Power BI to happen after each refresh happens in Azure.  So, you can have 8 refreshes a day with new data.  

The limiter is not Power BI or timezone for the users - it is how often your data itself is refreshed.

If you truly want to have refreshed data when the users' shifts start you will need to back up the Azure refresh to meet the time that users come in.  But, with a 3 hour cycle, you are unable to get EST, CST, MST and PST to get fresh data.