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Dynamics Power BI dashboard - force manual refresh of underlying data?

Posted on by 202

Hello everyone,

Is it possible for a Dashboard within Dynamics CRM Online to force the refresh of back-end data which is used in a Power BI report?

Here's my issue....

I have several Power BI reports based around financial data which need to be kept up-to-date. I've created various Dashboards within CRM that show these Power BI reports to CRM users. However, because I'm a Power BI Pro User, I'm only able to set up a scheduled refresh of the Power BI reports 8 times per day, or once every working hour. This means that someone viewing the reports via the CRM dashboard, could be viewing data that is up-to 60 minutes old, or longer if they view it out of hours.

I assumed that the Refresh button on the CRM dashboard would update the underlying data in the Power BI report, but it doesn't. It only seems to refresh the visual in the CRM dashboard based on whatever data it thinks is current at that time.

Ideally I'd like to find a way to update the Power BI report from within the Dynamics CRM Online dashboard, otherwise users will get mightily confused (they're not particularly IT literate and simply won't understand that the data they're seeing is probably not up-to-date).

Any help on this, or any ideas as to how to resolve this issue, would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Jon

  • Suggested answer
    RE: Dynamics Power BI dashboard - force manual refresh of underlying data?

    Hi, JonClay, I hope you are doing good.

    If the proposed solution does not work, I would recommend to you opening a ticket in Microsoft Support.

    Welcome to this amazing community.

  • JonClay Profile Picture
    JonClay 202 on at
    RE: Dynamics Power BI dashboard - force manual refresh of underlying data?

    Hi Mehdi

    Many thanks for your message.

    I will try the Direct Query once I've managed to get that working too (we have a problem with connection via that method at the moment).

    It certainly sounds as though that will solve my problem.

    Best wishes,
    Jon

  • Suggested answer
    meelamri Profile Picture
    meelamri 13,204 User Group Leader on at
    RE: Dynamics Power BI dashboard - force manual refresh of underlying data?

    Hi,

    I think you will need to use directQuery. Below are the benefits of using directQuery:

    DirectQuery lets you build visualizations over very large datasets, where it would otherwise be unfeasible to first import all the data with pre-aggregation.

    Underlying data changes can require a refresh of data. For some reports, the need to display current data can require large data transfers, making reimporting data unfeasible. By contrast, DirectQuery reports always use current data.

    The 1-GB dataset limitation doesn't apply to DirectQuery.

    Source: docs.microsoft.com/.../desktop-use-directquery

    It is possible to use this connection mode on Dataverse using the TDS protocol. You can refer to this blog for more details: crmchartguy.com/.../

    Good Luck !

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