one drive refresh

[nswilen]

Hello all,

I have found this forum to be an excellent source and thought I'd pose my current issue. I am using a Power BI Pro License.

I have used Power BI Desktop to connect to Azure Blob Storage using Get Data on the ribbon, and I have saved this PBIX desktop file to my OneDrive for Business account. I have published this report to Power BI service, and have set up the refresh schedule to refresh my data daily (my understanding is this data refresh will refresh my data from Azure Blob Storage directly and not refresh visualization changes made in the desktop PBIX file).

My understanding was that since the PBIX desktopfile was saved to OneDrive for Business and published to PBI Service, if I made changes (such as adding a new visualization) and saved the updated file to OneDrive, OneDrive would synchronize those changes with PowerBI Service and my dashboard on the PowerBI Service would reflect the visualization changes within a few hours. I have made changes to my PBIX desktopfile, saved to OneDrive Business, and 8 hours later my PBI Service dashboard still doesn't reflect the update. PBI Service does reflect the visualization changes if I open the desktop file and re-publish with overwrite to PBI Service.

Do I understand the refresh capabilities incorrectly? I appreciate any help. Thank you.

Nate

[nswilen]

Thank you both! I hadn't located that discussion covering this topic, thank you.

I re-connected to my file via Get Data on Power Bi Service, and my PBIX file is updated from OneDrive as expected. All is well.

Thank you again!

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @nswilen,

If we publish the pbix file from desktop to Power BI service directly, once we make any change in pbix file, we need to re-publish the pbix file to Power BI service to reflect change. 

If we save the pbix file to OneDrive for Business, then in Power BI service use Get Data-> Files-> OneDrive - Business to publish pbix file. When we make changes to pbix file on OneDrive or SharePoint Online, such as adding new measures, changing column names, or editing visualizations, once we save the file those changes will be updated in the Power BI service too, usually within about an hour. If we want to get the report display latest data from Azure Blob Storage, we need to use Schedule Refresh or Refresh Now for the dataset. See: 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/refresh-desktop-file-onedrive

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Integrations-with-Files-and/Does-Auto-Refresh-from-Excel-on-Sharepoi...

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@nswilen This blog covers the full end to end. You need to connect to the file from the Service, not publish it in order for that auto update feature to work.

https://powerbi.tips/2017/08/best-practices-for-sharing/