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New way to schedule refreshes

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Scott A on 22 Nov 2017 02:54:28

The current method of setting up scheduled refresh in the Power BI service is clunky and nearly unusable--not to mention an RSI nightmare.

Some better solutions:
--Option for "Refresh every X minutes/hours/days"
--Ability to schedule more frequently
--Powershell to create/update Scheduled Refreshes for Datasets

Comments (11)
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a3309361 99be-ea11-a812-000d3a8ddfb2 on 10 Jul 2020 17:22:49

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

Impossible to stagger the schedule to refresh my many reports for the start of day. They all hit my reporting DB at the same time and is chugging slowly.

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1e2263ff 95d5-4879-9313-ffc5aa8534ff on 06 Jul 2020 00:17:58

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

It would be helpful to have a dropdown for every x minutes, x hours etc. rather than having to put an entry for every 30 mins, it's tedious. There are some datasets that I would like refreshed quicker than 30 mins but there is no option.

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813f701c bf39-43df-8caf-7209182403b1 on 06 Jul 2020 00:08:08

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

The entire Scheduled Refresh page needs to be re-designed. From a user interface aspect, it has serious flaws.
1) I have an Enterprise gateway installed on my machine. Yet I see this yellow exclamation every time I log in saying, "You have no personal gateway installed". like I'm doing something wrong. The service needs to detect if there is ANY type of gateway installed on the machine, and only if NOTHING is, display the message. AND, give the user the option to dismiss it forever, for the current machine.
2) Why must I specify a Gateway BEFORE I tell it to keep my data up to date or not. I had a case where the Gateway was deleted on purpose. Now I'm going to get failure emails every day until MS decides to stop (takes about a week, I think). I should be able to shut that off at the top, BEFORE I specify a gateway.

I'm actually with Microsoft on the functionality of the 8 refreshes per day, every half hour. In the early days around the time of GA, it was ONCE per day, with no ability to specify the time. Then it was 3 times per day, then 6. Premium will get you 48. I'm thankful for how far it has come.

And have you ever looked at the ACTUAL refresh time compared to the SCHEDULED time? I have seen it vary by as much as 20 minutes. If MS gives you the ability to schedule to the MINUTE, you're going to expect it to be just so, and it won't happen, and you'll be disappointed. Remember, this is NOT SQL Server Agent, a tool many Power BI developers are intimately familiar with.

If you need it more than every half hour, look into streaming datasets, PUSHING data into Power BI via a stored procedure, or connect it to Azure Stream Analytics.

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49e26b23 ecc7-480d-a7ac-c54da821081e on 06 Jul 2020 00:00:37

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

i do not understand why reports, like from exchange online mailbox, which is refreshed in about a minute can only be scheduled 8 times per day. We are checking payments and it does not cover our opening ours.

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0791c03f 8abb-4daa-b7dc-1d6c767100ca on 05 Jul 2020 23:46:39

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

Agree with all comments. We need more granularity to schedule refreshes for a growing list of customers - so that they're not running at the same time when their data sets are living in the same Capacity. Ideal is 1-minute increment. Anything more frequent than 30 minutes would help.

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99d39484 0b3c-47cb-a98f-4a2ca2dbcd5e on 05 Jul 2020 23:46:23

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

This is extremely important. I have several reports to refresh and it is becoming impossible to stagger the schedule for all of them. I would prefer to just choose exact times for refreshes, but even 10 or 15 minute increments instead of 30 would make things much better.

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23829ea9 271b-49ff-b7e1-df50fed2b62d on 05 Jul 2020 23:40:50

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

At least give us 10 minute increments. You are cause issues on the node trying to run too many refreshes at once because you only give us 30 minute increments to choose from. We need to spread the schedules out.

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5cac44ff 3961-47ec-84a9-1ff1b4786f6b on 05 Jul 2020 23:28:58

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

Right now for a 30 hourly refresh I had to add 48 Slots. That is a Lot of wasted efforts

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378e1551 e7be-4a42-b6d0-dc198f1bbcc7 on 05 Jul 2020 23:14:09

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

Eight refresh events per day is too restrictive for many reporting requirements and doesn't allow reports to be updated hourly during the business day (which seems a reasonable schedule). Sure we have the push API which is great, but that requires development effort and limits reporting agility.

I understand there are processing overheads so maybe we could have more frequent refresh options restricted to smaller datasets?

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4d9fd9ad 0003-4349-834a-f2e565de872e on 05 Jul 2020 23:12:55

RE: New way to schedule refreshes

Need this option