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!
Related
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.
I have been tasked to research Power BI Connection to Mainframe Flat files in some cases vsam files
This is needed to replace an existing Legacy BI tool/Reporting that connects to Mainframe
POWER BI does not have a direct connection to Mainframe , so what would be the best way to connect to data sources (Flat files in some cases vsam files, if we need to convert vsam files to flat, we will do it)
Is there any third party tools that can can be used to bridge this gap between Power BI (or any other BI Tool) and the Mainframe data files (our shop already converts Vsam files to Flat files)
Thanks
You could do it my way, but it really only works for smaller, text-based files.
I have some code on the mainframe that converts the data in question into a sensible .csv format. I then compose and send an email on the mainframe to myself from a pre-defined email address (in my case I use "SAVE_TO_SHAREPOINT#<company_name>.com" with the .CSV data as an attachment.
I use Power Automate to pick up emails to myself from that email address and save the attachment to a SharePoint folder that is specified as the subject of the email.
This process can be automated to run whenever it is required. You can then use Power BI to pull in the .csv data fromthe specified SharePoint folder.
This won't work for everyone, but it currently works for me.
You could also use FTP, but you can't FTP to SharePoint, so you'd have to work out how you want the FTP'd data to get into Power BI.
I have an existing PowerBI report that imports data from an SQL Server analytics services database. This is working fine and I can schedule automatic refreshes using the Gateway provided by my organization.
I would now like to add some additional, but rarely changing data, that I only have in a local Excel file. When I do add this data, the report stops refreshing automatically and complains, that it has no gateway to refresh this Excel file.
What I would like is that Power BI is refreshing the data of the SQL Server analytics services database, but just keeps the existing Excel file without updating it. - I will upload an updated version of the PowerBI report if I need to change the data in the Excel file.
Is that possible? I couldn't find out how. I was trying to upload the Excel file to a different dataset to the Power BI service and reference this dataset in my report. Just to find out, that I cannot access a different Power BI dataset and SQL server analysis services database from the same report.
Three things I can think of
Upload the file to onedrive/sharepoint so that it's accessible online (per Dev's answer)
If the data is simple enough, you can add the data directly into PowerBI itself and skip the Excel file entirely.
You can disable the Excel file refresh so that PBI does not try and refresh(and thus access) the local Excel file. (Not sure if this will work)
I had a similar issue I came across. Yes, you can just use Enter Data to add a table, but you can only build something with less than 3000 cells, so you'd have to merge several tables if something was larger than that.
Turning off the report refresh in the suggestion above (#3) still requires a gateway, unfortunately.
I just created a dataflow and plopped the data from my csv there. You'll have to create a connection and refresh it, but you don't need to schedule a refresh there, so no need to create a gateway.
Then just link the dataflow as a source to your .pbix file and setup your gateway to point at the dataflow.
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
Hi I have an excel which is saved in one drive for business. I update the file on daily basis with the agent name, date and no of clients handled. I have created a report with power bi file in desktop version and published it in power bi online and then created link by publish to web option. Now this link is not updated with recent data.
I tried to create the report through power bi online but it does not have options like modeling and query editor...
I am very new to power bi so kindly excuse for any errors ....
I just need to give the operations team a link to view daily performance of the team, rather than opening excel file and looking at the data.
I just need to paste the data in excel file and the report should be updated automatically ...
I have created a report with power bi file in desktop version and published it in power bi online and then created link by publish to web option.
Creating the report in Power BI Desktop is the correct first step. But if you are using Publish to Web functionality, you are publicly sharing your data in an insecure manner. Do you actually mean Publish To Web, or do you just mean that you published your report to PowerBI.com?
Now this link is not updated with recent data.
You need to set a scheduled refresh so the Power BI model will contain the latest version of the data from your Excel file. You can also manually refresh your dataset, but if you want to make sure it has the latest data every day, scheduled refresh is the way to go. Locate your dataset in PowerBI.com. There will be a scheduled refresh option. On the settings page, enter your credentials, then under scheduled refresh turn on the Keep your data up to date toggle. Choose a frequency and time.
Here is a link to make sure you connected to your file in OneDrive correctly that also mentions how to set up scheduled refresh at the bottom.