Preventing power bi from disabling refresh

[smpa01]

I see the following for one of my datasets, which is not consumed as a report but has massive downstream dependencies.

It works as a SSAS datasource table for a lot of my reports.

Since Power Bi is deciding on its own to disable the refresh, it is messing up all the downstream reports. How can I prevent Power bi from not taking that decision at all?

[wikkleyn]

Hi @smpa01  

This is a known issue if I remember correctly. Have seen it in our environment as well.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/Bug-Refresh-disabled-on-Shared-Datasets-linked-to-Paginated/...

Have you looked at using Power Automate to trigger the dataset refresh?

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/refresh-your-power-bi-dataset-using-microsoft-flow/

[smpa01]

@wikkleyn  good suggestion for Power Automate.

But I have not worked with PA that much and I really don't want to start on a PA learning curve unless I absolutely have to.

While we are here, @mahoneypat does setting a Scheduled cloud flow in PA need me to switch off the scheduled Power BI refresh? and what if PA flow fails, do I need to set a notification for that? What if I don't turn off PBI scheduled refresh, does both refresh go through? 

The easier solution is to be able to overwrite PBI's refresh disabled capacity within Power BI.

[mahoneypat]

FYI that learning Power Automate is easier than Power BI, and this is a pretty simple application. The refresh triggered from the Flow would be independent from your scheduled refresh (but you should set them to run at different times).

Pat

[smpa01]

@mahoneypat if I set up the Scheduled cloud flow via PA to run to refresh a dataset at a different time than the PBI's scheduled refresh, is there any chance at all that PA can terminate the task (decide not to run the flow to refresh the dataset) based on whatever reason (same like PBI decides Due to inactivity, your scheduled refresh has been disabled. ) I have extremely high dependency on this dataset not missing a single refresh.

Please let me know if PA can ever throw such tantrums.

[mahoneypat]

What are your downstream dependencies that are not showing up as activity against the dataset?

A few ideas to consider:

1. Set up a subscription to a report using the dataset for daily/weekly to ensure activity.

2. Make sure refresh failure notification is set up to email you. You could also set up a Dashboard with a simple visual (row count, refresh date, etc.) and put an alert on that to get notified at each refresh for success or failure.

3. Set a flow that calls the refresh API daily/weekly to get last refresh datetime of your dataset, so you get notified if not recent enough.

Pat