I need to refresh the dataset on a powerbi desktop file. The data source is an excel file placed on my onedrive for business folder - to which I have access to. I also saved my pbix file in the folder, however I am using a Mac as of the moment and the only way I'm thinking of is to share the pbix file from one drive to my colleague from work. Will that work, or is there any other way to refresh the data without connecting to the desktop file?
P.S. I've check the refresh, but since my work laptop is offline - I can't schedule a refresh
In powerBI without sharing the pbix file you can share the dashboard with your colleagues just by selecting 'share' on the dashboard.
For the data source you can use an online database instead of the oneDrive file.
The way to allow PowerBI to refresh data from your Onedrive for business is to "share" the file in Onedrive for business. https://medium.com/#Konstantinos_Ioannou/onedrive-powerbi-desktop-use-valid-paths-to-import-data-stored-in-onedrive-for-business-60089848e594#.e9wn6kqjn
Then you can share a) either the PBIX file (refresh will be enabled; authentication to the file is "oauth2"). Or you can upload it to the PowerBI web service and share the dashboard there. You need to reauthenticate the data source and then also scheduled refresh will work.
I would publish your report to the PowerBi online service. Here you can then share the report with your colleague and setup a schedule refresh using the data gateway.
This would require a network connection though.
Related
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.
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 a problem:
I have a PBI file containing three data sources: 2 SQL Server sources + 1 API call.
I have separate queries for each respective data source and an additional query that combines all three queries into a single table.
Both SQL Server sources have been added to a gateway and I can set scheduled refresh for each source, if I publish them in separate PBI files.
However, I cannot set scheduled refresh for the file that contains all three sources - both the data source credentials and scheduled refresh options are greyed out.
The manage gateway section of the settings page also shows no gateway options. If I publish the SQL Server data (with no API data) I can clearly see my data source and gateway under the gateway heading.
screenshot of dataset settings
Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Thank you,
I had the same problem.
I have a PBI file with different data sources : SQL Server sources and APIs.
On The PowerBI Service the Data Source Credentials was grayed out, so here's what I did :
Downloaded the file
Refresh the file locally and signed up on all data sources (the Server of DB Server name changed but not for the APIs)
published in the PBI Service
It worked for me.
Same problem here. After additional poking around I learned that the "Web Source" (API call) was the reason for the inability to refresh and can cause "Data Source Credentials" to be inaccessible. This was annoying to learn after diving down several rabbit holes.
Several (weak) workarounds
Using Excel's Power Query to connect to the web source. Learn more about Excel's Power Query.
Make any needed transformations.
Put the Excel file in SharePoint Online folder or other PBI accessible directory.
Connect to the Excel file using the appropriate data source (i.e. SharePoint Folder).
Alternatively, if the data is static, you can directly copy/paste values into PBI (if you just need to get this done and move on with your life):
Copy target values
Open Power Query Editor
Home tab -> Enter Data
Paste values into table
Hopefully this will save some poor soul a little of their life.
How to set up automatic hourly refresh of a Power BI dataset from an Excel file stored on OneDrive for Business? What am I doing wrong?
My set up goes the following path on the map of possible connections described by Vesa Tikkanen in the post Power BI: Why my report is not refreshing from OneDrive? Compatibility chart for sources.
Original image comes from: https://www.qumio.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=44
Manual refresh of a dataset works correctly as shown on the picture below but hourly refresh does not even start.
I try to set up automatic hourly refresh by choosing 1 and then 3 "Schedule refresh". I have OneDrive refresh set up for ON. It should be sufficient. Should anything else be enabled? Should "Scheduled refresh" be enabled?
For sure I have good "Data source credentials", because manual refresh works. My PBIX file is also stored on OneDrive so it does not require "Publishing" for PBIX update.
I have sourced my Excel file just like it has been presented in this tutorial: https://youtu.be/uxMlV9KKf6E?t=315
I try to explain the meaning of those 2 different options.
Scheduled refresh is for Power BI to go to source and read new data and refresh the model with the new data.
OneDrive Refresh is for automatically re-uploading the file from OneDrive to Power BI. So if you don't update the file it will upload every hour that same pbix file to service. This behaviour is meant for reports which cannot be scheduled to be auto refreshed but you manually construct new version of the report and that should be uploaded automatically to service after you updating the file in OneDrive.
I think you are trying to implement the automatic refresh. That means that you should uncheck the onedrive refresh and add scheduled refresh to report. This "Onedrive refresh" option is only visible when you originally uploaded report from OneDrive.
OneDrive Refresh is for updating the file, scheduled refresh is to collect data from source
We are using PowerBI online. we purchased pro license.
I checked for my login and I am in Global Administrator role.
Still I found Refresh schedule on Dataset option disabled for me?
It is disabled, because your dataset is not refreshable. You should check What's supported? section of Configuring scheduled refresh article. You didn't mention what is the source of your dataset. In general, Power BI service needs access to the data source to be able to refresh the dataset. This means that either your data source should be somewhere in the cloud (e.g. Azure SQL Database, file on OneDrive and SharePoint Online, etc.), or there is a data gateway installed and configured.