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paulsnet1986
Helper I
Helper I

Dataflow Column Blank Upon Refresh Completion -SOMETIMES-

Got a really frustrating issue - We have some data from a SAP Hana DB that we made available in a Power BI Dataflow and have used said data to create and publish some critial Power BI reports. The data is refreshed once daily, overnight.

 

Recently we've been running into an issue where our users are loading the reports in the morning only to find them blank/empty. Upon review we determined this was because the all rows of the status columns (open/closed/cancelled) and (active/inactive) are entirely blank after the refresh. The report is then filtered by an slicer selection that has no matches, and is thus blank when the user opens the report. They can still see all the data by unchecking the slicer, but the report is useless because all statuses are blank.

 

This is exceptionally frustrating because it only happens SOMETIMES (maybe once every 7-10 days) and is often fixed by refreshing the data in the Power BI service again. Occasionallythat fails (the columns are still blank), and the data must be refreshed via the PBIX using Power BI desktop and then republished.

 

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated because we are out of ideas. Additional context:

 

-One of the status columns is created via conditional logic in Power Query, and the other is straight from the Hana database with no transformation.

-None of the other columns are blank after refresh.

-There is no text/boolean TRUE/FALSE logic.

1 REPLY 1
RossEdwards
Solution Specialist
Solution Specialist

Are you relying on database tables that get periodically updated?  I've run into troubles in the past where i'm using tables that get transformed by a database process and sometimes that process takes longer than expected.  When that happens, Power BI is using incomplete data and therefore can have outcomes like you have noted.

If you have a database team, check with them about your source tables (start with the big transacational ones) and see what they process end times are.  Maybe you need to bump your refresh times to be a bit later.

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