Can either Power Apps or Power Automate be used to refresh Power BI dashboards that get their data from the 'Import' option? - powerbi

My business doesn't like using Direct Query. They believe in putting all data in to Power BI via the 'Import' option. This means that whenever our team wants to refresh the data in a Power Bi dashboard, they must:
Download the .pbix file from the SharePoint where they're published.
Open that file in Power BI desktop.
Click to refresh the data from our SQL server.
Re-publish the dashboard.
This has to be done for every single dashboard that we have. This is plainly absurd.
Can either Power Apps or Power Automate be used to refresh several dashboards at once? I don't know what licensing I have for Power Apps, but when I went through the list of connections that the web version let me use, I saw no options for Power BI. As for Power Automate, I saw no way to access my dashboards.

If your data is hosted in your internal network, you need to install the Data Gateway on a machine in your network. You can then use that data gateway for scheduled refresh and don't need to download/refres/upload the pbix file.
The Data Gateway is a free download. You can find links to that in the menus of the Power BI online interface.

Related

I have a power bi desktop connected with sql database and have some reports in it

I have a power bi desktop connected with SQL database and have some reports in it.
Now I want to generate following things
Every time user enter the name of the database my reports gets automatically refresh and exported in PDF or excel.
If possible I have browser where user can enter the SQL database name and UI pop up and end user can see the power BI dashboard where all reports automatically refreshed as per the user input SQL database name.
Thanks in advance!
For ask 1:
Refer Create and use R visuals in Power BI Once R is installed, open the Run R Script and paste the below R script, depending on your destination and save it.
Example as a excel file: write.xlsx(dataset, file = "C:/dataset.xlsx")
If you are interested in (PDF) and know Microsoft Power Platform, use On Power BI button clicked trigger followed with Export To File for Power BI Reports actions API to export a PDF to your local directory. Demo screenshot
For ask 2:
You can check Embed a report in a secure portal or website to easily embed reports in internal web portals and utilize Automatic page refresh in the Power BI service to set automatic page refresh for reports as long as the data source is DirectQuery.
Power BI Desktop has no restrictions for refresh intervals and can be as frequent as every second. But when reports are published to the Power BI service, certain restrictions apply.
Alternately you can use Datasets Power BI REST APIs - to trigger a refresh for the specified dataset from "My Workspace".
POST https://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/datasets/{datasetId}/refreshes
You can also leverage Q&A for Power BI business users the fastest way to get an answer from your data by asking a question using natural language.

Power BI Desktop.. Automatic Refresh and Published

I am rather new to Power BI, but I think I have a rather simple question.
Power BI is connected to Google BigQuery through import. Within PowerBI I make some transformations to create my visualisations. These visualisations create a report.
I publish the report and can then find it on https://app.powerbi.com/ in my Power BI environment.
The data in Google BigQuery is updated daily. Can I update the report online automatically without me having to press refresh in Power BI desktop? As the data gets updated automatically and I will not be changing the visualisations daily, I would think this is achievable.
If the answer is yes, how might I achieve this in the most simplest of terms?
Yes, you can. It is called scheduled refresh. After publishing your report to Power BI Service, go to Settings -> Datasets, select your dataset in the list, enter the credentials under Data source credentials section (if needed), and then configure the settings under Scheduled refresh section:

How to deploy Power BI reports and connect them to a single Power BI Dataset

As far as I know, deploying a Power BI report from Power BI Desktop results in two items, the report itself and the dataset. When deploying a new report using the same dataset, will deploy the new report and a second copy of the same dataset in Power BI Service. That is not what I wanted. To not confuse end users and other, I want only an unique dataset deployed.
I want to make use of Azure Devops deploying to Power BI Service in a Dev, Test and Prod way. The dataset will be an azure analysis services data model, but the principle should be the same. I need to reduce the dataset to be exactly one and all reports must relate to that data model. I have heard of a Rest API or powershell scripting that can come to a rescue here.
So if any of you have done this or know of a good article that describes how to do this, I would be grateful.
Regards Geir
The best option is to separate the Power BI report in the frontend and the backend. You create a file purely for the dataset if you are importing, no reports created on it. You can then create the reports, using the service connection to the dataset, or with Power BI desktop, in the connection to Power BI Dataset option. Both will use 'Live Connection' mode, so you cannot add any other data sources to the model, for example bring in a CSV file or SQL database.
If you are connecting to an Azure Analysis Service data model, you can use this approach, however as it is only a connection only, not a full fat dataset, it should not be an issue to have copies of the dataset, as it is just the connection. Having copies of the dataset is only an issue if you are importing data, then it is best to move things to data flows, and use the same front/back end method, and the planning around the scheduling of the dataflows then datasets
You can use the REST API to move reports and the datasets that they connect to, and move items to new workspaces. If you have Power BI Premium that has a life cycle tool to move items between dev/test/live workspaces
If you create a report in desktop and choose 'Power BI Dataset' as live connection to work over it - when you upload the report to the same workspace, it will only upload the report and connect to the same dataset
https://radacad.com/power-bi-shared-datasets-what-is-it-how-does-it-work-and-why-should-you-care#:~:text=A%20shared%20dataset%20is%20a%20dataset%20that%20shared%20between%20multiple,tenant%20in%20Power%20BI%20environment.

Not able to schedule refresh report on POWER BI for web

I was able to refresh a power BI report using the desktop application. But when I am trying to schedule a refresh using the web application I am getting the following error.
I am getting data using the web source. I am using functions in the connection string. Is there a way I can schedule refresh in this case.
The maximum size for datasets imported into the Power BI service is 1 GB and Power BI Service places a limit on the amount of uncompressed data that is processed during refresh to 10 GB.
If you still hit the above two limitations, you are not able to refresh dataset in Power BI Service. You can use DirectQuery/Live connection mode to connect to your data source instead, or purchase Power BI Premium license to solve this issue.
You can also try to solve the issue by creating a view of the table within the source database
References:
https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/report-server/scheduled-refresh

Power BI Desktop Scheduled Refresh

I know it is possible to adhoc refresh the data on power bi desktop but unlike on power bi online I am unable to find a way of creating a scheduled refresh. I have looked into personal gateways but unable to find a suitable solution. I want the data to be refreshed daily and this data is coming from a postgres database in Amazon Web Service where the data is updated daily.
Power BI desktop(local) have only manual refresh, scheduler is not available in desktop power bi when you want to implement scheduler then follow this link
how-to-configure-schedule-refresh-in-power-bi-reports
when you established a connection using the database and create report and publish on app power bi from power bi desktop after that apply scheduler then it will reflect data changes on every refresh.
Cheers.