How to refresh Power BI service report every 10-15 min with a PRO Account

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I have tried to use my Pro account to auto refresh my reports in power bi service but the max refresh times = 8 per day.

Unless you can hit the refresh button in power Bi service and that works but I want to automate this process.

I was thinking of using Power Automate (Flow) to set Schedule to Auto refresh my power bi reports. But would this face any issues and exceed the refresh times allowed by Power BI service?

Maybe you have any other options? 

I am not able to use Directquery or liveconnection with my actual datasets as i am connect to a raw SQL database.

[nickyvv]

Hi @Anonymous, unfortunately you are always limited to the 8 refreshes per day, if you use the Scheduled Refresh, Power BI REST API, of Power Automate (unless your workspace is in Premium capacity, but I guess you figured that out already). 

You last remark did trigger me, because you say:

I am not able to use Directquery or liveconnection with my actual datasets as i am connect to a raw SQL database.

I'm not sure how this would refrain you from using DirectQuery? Could you elaborate on this a bit more? Do you mean by using DirectQuery you lose certain functionality in DAX or are you facing any of the other limitations?

[Anonymous]

TIME OUT when using DirectQuery and not IMport

Hi @nickyvv 

When I use DirectQuery I get TIME OUT. But with Import works great.

Sometimes it passes the Loading display above and in Transform Data I get the same error again.

[nickyvv]

Hi @Anonymous, I think you're referring to the error message in DirectQuery with Transform Data:

This step results in a query that is not supported in DirectQuery mode.

This means one or more steps in Power Query are not supported with DirectQuery. This means either rewriting the steps. or using a SQL-statement to get all the transformations directly from the source.

The reason why you get a timeout in the Navigator is not clear to me, that's a bit strange actually. Are you able to connect to the database correctly using SSMS for example?

With regards to your "writing a script to auto-trigger the refresh now option", not sure if this is possible, but that would be a nice work-around 😀

[Anonymous]

Hi @nickyvv 

I only get time out when I use DirectQuery but when using Import is works smoothly!!! It means there is a connection with the DB.

I am opening a new Power BI file and using SQL connector, I do not see any Power Query steps applied!!?? a bit strange to me.

[Anonymous]

Hi @nickyvv 

Thank you for your reply.

We are using the report to monitor our service center requests (Dashboard in big screen). We need to refresh the dashboard/report more frequently and 8 times per day is truly not suitable for us.

Further, we have built a report recently by using a SQL database and we do not want to rebuild the report using DWH and Cubes (Live connection) unless its really necessary. Live connection offers the option to refresh the dataset every 5 min (more frequently).

We are trying to find an alternate way based on our actual report connection, that's why I was thinking about Power Automate.

We can still click every time on the Refresh button in Power BI service but that is not efficient. We were also thinking about writing a script to auto-trigger the Refresh button in Power BI service.