Refresh Desktop Power BI model using Power Automate

[wrwillits]

Can I use Power Automate to refresh a desktop Power BI model? I have previously set up an automatic refresh using a gateway but for some reason the refresh will not complete and I get an error (I think it times out because it can take up to 5 minutes to refresh). I can manually refresh the model from my desktop Power BI Pro, and then publish it back up to the service, but it's a manual process and want to automate it. Can I set up a flow in Power Automate that will automatically refresh the model and publish it up to the Power BI service?

I have signed up for the paid version Power Automate and have been looking through the desktop version of the system for any controls specifically for Power BI but don't see them (they have them for Excel, Exchange, Outlook and others, but not Power BI). I've also tried Desktop Recorder to see if that would work but it also seems to get stuck and doesn't work. 

Any suggestions on how to automate the refresh/publish process?

[v-deddai1-msft]

Hi @wrwillits ,

I am not familiar with power automate, so I can't give you advice for power automate.It's better you can create a new post in power automate. But why you don't try to solve the refresh error in power bi service?

Best Regards,

Dedmon Dai

[ChrisMendoza]

Did you see https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/refresh-your-power-bi-dataset-using-microsoft-flow/ ? Also the connector list https://us.flow.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/shared_powerbi/power-bi/ which can take you to the documentation at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/powerbi/

You'll also want to pay attention to your API limits https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/api-request-limits-allocations . I just learned yesterday that each action is an API call in https://youtu.be/TCIr7Bc3Oko which is @JLevesque YouTube's with RezaDorrani as his guest.

[wrwillits]

Hi Chris,

Yes, I did actually try the PowerBI connector in Power Automate. The issue, though, is that I don't believe that it is actually refreshing the underlying data that the PowerBI model is using. The data for the PowerBI desktop model is actually coming from an external cloud database system that's capturing the data. When I do a refresh manually in PowerBI desktop, it takes approximately 5 minutes to refresh. Using the PowerBI connector in Power Automate though, the refresh is taking 44ms. It would be great if the refresh only took 44ms, but what I think is going on is that it's only refreshing what's already loaded into the PowerBI desktop model, but not doing the refresh with the underlying data from the external cloud database. 

Warren