Confused about the flow of data with Dataflows vs. importing from SQL database

[Anonymous]

Ok so lets see if I can describe this correctly.

At my job, my predecessor set it up so that there is an excel file that is downloaded from a website that has its own way of compiling. The original was to refresh the data was to open an Excel file that had custom macros that would allow you to select the excel file, which would then run the macros. Then you would go into Power BI service and refresh the Dataflows, and then the Dataset. When in Power BI Desktop, under that data source options, it specified "Dataflows" as the data source. I believe it used Azure of some kind but funny enough I did not have access to anything Azure.

I created a report that connected directly to the data base (PostgreSQL), and all was dandy. My issue now is that it does not refresh the report unless I still run the previous steps of downloading the excel file, running the macros, and then refreshing the dataflows. I was under the impression that by connecting directly to the database, it would refresh much quicker and also actually refresh the data when I just refreshed the dataset. I wanted to do this so I could automate the process more.

Where is my logic wrong? Why doesn't the data refresh when it is importing directly from the database?

[v-jingzhang]

When you say "import from SQL database", do you mean you first import the data from Excel file into the data base, then use the data base as a data source of your Power BI report? If you don't need to do any transformation work to the Excel data, you could directly use the Excel file as a data source via Get data > Excel and import the data into Power BI.

You could click Refresh button in Power BI Desktop to refresh the data. It means reimport all the data from the local Excel file again. When you want to refresh it manually or automatically on the Service, you will need to use an on-premises gateway. 

Per my understanding, the first step for automation is to get the Excel file from the web site automatically. Not sure what the website is and whether there is any restriction from the website, I am not able to tell which method could download the file automatically. But if the file has a URL, it is possibly able to be get via Get data > Web (e.g. Google Spreadsheet).