PowerBI on demand report/dataset generation - powerbi

Perhaps better to rephrase my question.
If I have a powerbi report..
Can I somehow make copies of this report with different data(set?) via an API and on demand?
e.g.
User requests a report with some parameters,
Existing report gets copies with a new dataset and published
tnx
Brian
== origional question below ==
Would anyone be able to point in in the right direction here.
I currently have a c# application that generates reports which are simply excel files.
Each time I create a report I simply open an excel file with some preexisting formatting, set the data in a particular sheet then save it to a new location.
How can I achieve something similar with PowerBI?
Ideaily I'd like to open a precanned powerbi report, pass a parameter to the 'dataset' I've just generated,
I dont have any string feeling as to what the dataset would be, I'm open to whatever works,
database/static dataset created by csharp somehow/webservice/etc.
Can anyone suggest how? tnx

How about creating you Power BI report based on your existing Excel files? Make sure to store them on SharePoint so that the PowerBI Online Service can pick them up w/o additional gateways. You can then use your app to trigger the report refresh as soon as the Excel files have been updated.

Related

Refresh Power Bi dataset based on Onedrive Excel file

Im trying to just understand the basics of Power Bi service refreshing reports from datasets, and despite several questions on here (like this one and this one) and several microsoft articles, Im still lost.
Lets say I go on my corporate onedrive account and create a very basic excel file. Two columns, some fake names and fake numbers.
Then I close that. Open Power Bi desktop and create a very basic report where I just dump that data into a table. Also worth pointing out I bring that data in using this method to copy and paste the sharepoint path to the file (and do all the other stuff on that page as far as authenticating my work account, getting the data, etc.. I do that because in other places I read that if the onedrive path was the path as its seen on your computer, it wont work.
I then publish the report to the service online. Works great so far.
I now want to refresh my report based on a change I made to the data. So I open the onedrive excel doc, change a number, save and close.
Now no matter what I do, the report wont refresh. When I click to refresh here:
It gives me this error:
When I google that error it says I need to change the permissions, so I go to the data source settings in Power bi desktop and have done all sorts of things in various attempts. I.e. "clear permissions" or "edit permissions" and make sure it says "none", etc... etc..
What am I misunderstanding?
Lastly, I dont understand it at all, but Ive heard previously I may need a "gateway". At one point a week or two ago I had my companies IT department install a gateway and as far as I can tell its on right now:
I was told I need to select OAuth2 as the Authentication method, but where I would expect to find the menu for dataset credentials (pic below, I'd expect it to read dataset description, then gateway connection, then data source credentials) I dont even see the option:
Also obviously that warning on the screen (cant refresh because data sources dont support refresh) sounds relevant, but a- it looks like the whole error isnt even there, b- its just an excel file on onedrive, shouldn't that work?
After publishing the pbix in the Power BI you need to configure the data source credentials to use OAuth2.

Can PowerBi dynamically load files?

I think I'm on a severe wishful thinking trip here, please confirm if I am, if not then what would be the process to accomplish this?
Every day a team compiles an Excel file and sends it via email attachment. I have a Power Automate Flow that saves the attachment into a SharePoint space.
I can create a Power Bi and manually connect load those files to create the report, but it seems the real "Power" would be to not have to manually connect the new file (which has the creation date in the filename - eg 'Daily DRR 3-16-22.xlsx') every day, ergo:
What steps (using the Power Platform) would I take to have my PowerBi report auto (dynamically) refresh using the last 5 files (days) in the SharePoint drive? Is that possible?
Thanks in advance!

Older Power-BI pbix using a SharePoint-Online list that has had new fields added

I have a Power-BI dashboard that was created some time ago. It’s data source is a SharePoint-Online list. Since the Power-BI dashboard was created, several new fields have been added to the SharePoint list. Now I am being asked to add a new page to the dashboard that reports on those new fields. However, I have not found a way to get the existing Power-BI list/dataset to show the new fields.
Refreshing the data does refresh the values, but refresh does not add the new fields.
I’ve spend the last 4 hours looking on the internet for a solution. The only thing I have been able to do so far is to attach the list again with a different name- the new fields DO show up when I do this. (I can’t just replace the older Power-BI list/dataset because there have been several calculated columns and measures added.)
I can work with this and create the report, but is this the only way? It doesn’t seem like it should be.
Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!
(I'm using Power BI April 2021 and Sharepoint Online)
So, it looks like there's no good answer to this issue. I found that adding another instance of the reference Sharepoint list, that included the new columns, did work (however inelegant). That seems to be the best direct answer for times when the older pbix file must continue to be used.
What I ended up doing, though, was to create a new separate pbix file which included the latest version of the Sharepoint List. This was the best solution for my organization since it will allow us to be more focused on the specific manufacturing processes involved.
Thanks to #Jon and #Alejandro for their efforts to help!
If you have access to PowerAutomate you could refresh the dataset creating a flow so that given a certain time (say, once or twice a day) the dataset gets refreshed with the new created items.
Otherwise if you are working with the service version of Power BI you can program a refresh of the dataset directly from the workspace going to the settings of the dataset. You would have to have a gateway set for that which could be in personal mode or not.
Also if you want to update the data in the service version you could do it manually too in the workspace.

Switching the Data source in a Power BI Report

I have an Existing report in Power BI with Oracle Data Source from which I had directly access the Table.
But now I need to Change the Data Source of the Report using SSAS.
By Using SSAS, we can access the oracle Tables and deploy the SSAS in Azure Service.
Now through this Azure Service we can access the Data.
My Question is Without any Changes in the Report, Can we Simply Change the DataSource? Because I'm Showing Lot of Graphs in that Report.
Since I'm New to Power BI , Is this possible?
There will likely be an unpredictably large amount of other issues (character encoding, date formatting, etc.) that you'll have to work through.
The way I might approach this problem is, if the tables are exactly identical, or you didn't make any changes within power query (like removing columns, merging tables, etc.) you may be able to modify the M code within the advanced editor, and try to swap the data sources to see if it works.
Go into "Transform Data"
Select the table you want to modify
Click the "Advanced Editor" icon in the ribbon.
Here, I imported an excel file, but for you, it should show some kind of "AnalysisServices" line. I don't have an SSAS database to connect to so I can't validate. Try replacing this line with the connection string to your SSAS datasource and see if it works.
Save, apply update, and see if it works?
Again, this is not really advisable, but if you want to give it a try, and the data sources are identical, this is how I might approach the problem before just re-making the report whole-cloth.

PowerBI - Automatic Refresh OneDrive Business From Excel File

I have an excel sheet stored in a OneDrive Business Folder, which is updated continuously (approximately every minute). I am trying to show a live count of the number of entries in the table, as below, on a powerBI report:
From here I have tried two options:
1.Created a PowerBI Desktop File which shows the total count on a single card. I have then published this to PowerBI Service as a report.
2.Imported the excel file in via "Get Data->Files->OneDrive-Business" on PBI Service:
I loaded in the data and then created a report as below:
However, when a change is made to the excel file on the onedrive, the report data does not update automatically when any change is made. Instead, the only way that it updates is via the "refresh now" option in datasets on PBI service:
Then once that is refreshed, I have to manually refresh the data in the report window also.
The connection between the report and the excel file is therefore available to allow the manual update, but for some reason does not automatically update when I make a change. Are there are solutions available to get this to update automatically.
I saw this cool idea, but I can't seem to get it to work:
https://bigintsolutions.com/2019/03/29/refresh-power-bi-report-every-min-and-show-on-a-tv/
I have also read many threads, with some people having the same issue I am having:
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Power-Query/Automatic-Refresh-not-working-when-connecting-to-SharePoint/td-p/546308
I know that there should be an update every hour for PowerBI-OneDrive connections, but I was hoping there was a way for updating live.
Goal: PowerBI Service Report to update automatically, for live data feed to a TV screen, when a change is made, say every minute.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Where are you sourcing your data? Updating each minute to an Excel file seems like something that won’t scale in the long term. This sounds like a better scenario for a real-time dataset that is in hybrid mode. Then you could build a dashboard over the data and it would automatically update as the data updates. I’ve used Power Automate to push data into a real-time dataset as well.
Treb Gatte, Power BI MVP