Simple Resource for Citizen Developers - Automating the Refresh of Data

[derb]

Hi,

I am a citizen developer and I have really really enjoyed creating many reports, dashboards, etc.  and I love the Power BI.  But I have over this past year tried several times to get my dashboards to automatically refresh.  Does someone have an easy to follow guide for citizen developers for how to schedule refreshes from data held in excel spreadsheets?  Or at least one straight forward way?

What is the best place to store the files? - File Share, One Drive, Sharepoint

What do I need to create the refresh schedule? Do I need a gateway and what is that?

What is the difference in requirements for the Report Server vs. the Service?

Between the security to get people access to the reports and trying to figure out the refresh scheduling these are my two biggest barriers as a Citizen Developer.... I got the data, I got the report... but I need to manually refresh it... and I can't get anyone to be able to see it in the service... so I place it on a report server and I have figured out the security there.

Sorry a bit of a rant... I'm frustrated.  I will buy books, or whatever resources necessary... thanks for pointing me in right direction.

[v-yangliu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi  @derb ,

If you want to refresh the data saved in the Excel spreadsheet, you need the following steps:

1. Import Excel data from Power BI Desktop.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/desktop-data-sources

2. Publish to Power BI Service, download and configure the gateway.

The gateway acts as a bridge between the cloud service and the local data source to ensure the security between the connection channels, if the data source of Power BI is located in the local location, you should use the gateway to create a connection from the cloud-based Power BI service and the local data source. For online or cloud-based data sources, the gateway is not required.

Download gateway:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/data-integration/gateway/service-gateway-install

What is a gateway:https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-gateway-onprem

3. After configuring the gateway, you need to configure Schedule refresh to customize the refresh time and refresh interval to refresh your data regularly.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/refresh-scheduled-refresh

You can check the difference between report server and Power bi services here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/compare-report-server-service

Best Regards,

Liu Yang

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