Bug: Power BI Report Server - Scheduled Refresh rolling back Report to previous version

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

In the last few months we have encounted a strange issue regarding scheduled refresh rolling back the current report version to the previous report version on the Power BI Report Server. We found that when a new version is published over the top of the current version (overwrite), the new version renders correctly, however after its first scheduled refresh is completed, a number of changes which were present in the new version have now been rolled back to the previous version, the issue can be replicated by following the below steps (We are using Jan 2020 for both the Report Server & the Desktop App)

1. Create a simple Report and deploy the Report to the Power BI Report Server

2. Modify the same Report slightly, change the formatting of an existing measure orchange an existing label font size (I say existing as this issue only seems to effect existing Report elements, if a new element is created, this will render successfully after the scheduled refresh)

3. Deploy this now modified Report to the Report Server, overriting the previous Report.

4. Open the newly modified Report in the Report Server, confirm that the new changes are present (which they should be)

5. Run a scheduled Refresh, confirm that this completes successfully.

6. Open the newly modified Report in the Report Server once again, make sure to refresh the browser first.

7. Any of the changes made to the new report and now reverted back to the previous version.

We were able to avoid this issue by finding a work around which we were able to advise the developers and business users to run a 'Refresh All' on their local machine before publishing a modified version of the Report over the top of an existing version - not exactly sure why this works.

Has anyone else come across this issue before? And if so, how was it solved?

At the moment we are using the workaround, however I don't feel that this should be required before a publish and I don't feel that this 'rollback' of changes is by design.

Thanks

[v-chuncz-msft]

@Anonymous 

Always try the new version and delete the report first. To get better technical support for this issue, you may directly create a support ticket.

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-chuncz-msft - thanks for the reply.

We have successfully tested the above solution a number of times previously - you are correct in that by deleting the older version of the report before publishing the new version of the report this issue wil not occur. However, a downside to this is you are deleting/detatching any historical logs associated with the older report as your are essentially publishing a 'brand new' report in its place.

We require these historical logs for usage reports which utilse a number of the underlying system tables, unfortunately, this is not an option.

Will create a support ticket on this, thanks - will update this post if a solution is reached.

[Anonymous]

FYI - have tested this thoroughly after upgrading to the May 2020 version of Power BI Report Server, this issue seems to no longer be occuring.

Thanks for resolving this issue so quickly PBI team.