If you’ve landed on this article from a Google search, we hope you’ve already read Part 1 and will give a read to Part 3 of this Power BI tutorial series too.
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Here we are with the second part of Power BI data refresh and scheduling. In the preceding article we spoke about:
- What is data refresh.
- Why do you need refresh your Big Data.
- Types of refresh in the BI tool
- And data refresh and scheduling in different data sources within Business Intelligence.In this article, we will cover
- How to configure scheduled Big Data refresh in BI
- Which datasets are supported against different gateways for a scheduled refresh within Power BI
Configuring scheduled refresh in Business Intelligence
- If your dataset supports scheduled refresh, by using ‘Refresh Now’ and ‘Schedule Refresh’, there are a few requirements and settings important for a successful refresh.
- These are Gateway connection, Data Source Credentials, and Schedule Refresh.
- To get to the ‘Schedule Refresh’ screen, you can do the following-
- Select the ellipsis (…) next to a dataset listed under Datasets.
- Select ‘Schedule Refresh’.
Gateway Connection
- You will see different options here depending on whether you have a personal, enterprise and gateway available online.
- If no gateway is available, you will see ‘Gateway settings’ disabled. You will also see a message indicating how to install the ‘Personal Gateway’.
- If you have a ‘Personal Gateway’ configured, it will be available to select online. It will show offline if it is not available.
- You can also select the ‘Enterprise Gateway’ if one is available for you. You will only see an ‘Enterprise Gateway’ available if your account is listed in the ‘Users tab’ of the data source configured for a given gateway.
Data Source Credentials
Power BI Gateway – Personal
- If you are using the ‘Personal Gateway’ to refresh data, you will need to supply the credentials used to connect to the back-end data source. If you connected to a content pack, from an online service, the credentials you entered to connect will be carried over for scheduled refresh.
- You’re only required to sign in to data sources the first time you use refresh on that dataset. Once entered, those credentials are retained with the dataset.
- For some authentication methods, if the password you use to sign into a data source expires or is changed, you’ll need to change it for the data source in ‘Data Source Credentials’ too.
On-premises data gateway
If you are using the On-premises data gateway to refresh data, you do not need to supply credentials as they are defined for the data source by the gateway administrator.
- When connecting to on-premises SharePoint for data refresh, Power BI supports only Anonymous, Basic, and Windows (NTLM/Kerberos) authentication mechanisms. Power BI does not support ‘ADFS’ or any ‘Forms-Based’, ‘Authentication’ mechanisms for data refresh of on-premises SharePoint data sources.
Schedule Refresh
- The scheduled refresh section is where you define the frequency and time slots to refresh the dataset. Some data sources do not require a gateway present to be available to configure while others do.
- You must set the keep your data slider to Yes to configure the settings.
- The Power BI service targets initiating the refresh of your data within 15 minutes of your scheduled refresh time.
- After two months of inactivity, scheduled refresh on your dataset is paused. A dataset is considered inactive when no user has visited any dashboard or report built on the dataset. At that time, the dataset owner is sent an email indicating the scheduled refresh is paused, and the refresh schedule for the dataset is displayed as disabled. To resume scheduled refresh, simply revisit any dashboard or report built on the dataset in the Business Intelligence tool
What’s Supported?
In Power BI Gateway – Personal
Certain datasets are supported against different gateways for scheduled refresh. Here is a reference to understand what is available.
- All online data sources shown in the BI Desktop’s Get Data and Query Editor.
- All on-premises data sources shown in Power BI Desktop’s Get Data and Query Editor except for Hadoop file (HDFS) and Microsoft Exchange.
In Excel
In Excel 2016, and later, Power Query is now listed on the data section of the ribbon, under ‘Get & Transform data’.
- All online data sources shown in Power Query.
- All on-premises data sources shown in Power Query except for Hadoop file (HDFS) and Microsoft Exchange.
- All online data sources shown in Power Pivot.
- All on-premises data sources shown in Power Pivot except for Hadoop file (HDFS) and Microsoft Exchange.
In On-premises data gateway
- Data SourceAnalysis Services Tabular
- Analysis Services Tabular
- Analysis Services Multidimensional
- SQL Server
- SAP HANA
- Oracle
- Teradata
- File
- Folder
- SharePointlist(on-premises)
- Web
- OData
- IBM DB2
- MySQL
- Sybase
- SAP BW
- IBM Informix Database
- ODBC
And we’re not done yet. We want to bring you everything you need to know about Power BI data refresh and scheduling and we have pulled out whatever information you need to know to access the latest Big Data.
Our 3rd and concluding article in this series will flesh out the process of incremental data refresh using the Business Intelligence tool for you.