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How to Schedule REFRESH on File & Folder Sources in Power BI
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many people who are just starting out
with powerbi are working with files on
their local computer and to refresh
their reports they are clicking the
refresh button in the toolbar up here
and that can be okay for a while however
eventually most people decide that they
want to automate this process by
scheduling refresh and I'm going to go
through a few best practices as well as
we go along to help you get started out
on the right track because it's a lot
easier to start from the right place
rather than go back and fix it later and
at the end of the video I'm going to go
through couple ideas for you to take the
automation one step
further the first step is to look at
where your file and folder sources are
right now and move them to SharePoint
online I have tutorials that explain
exactly how to do this step by step I'm
going to link those in the video
description there's one for individual
files and one for folder sources because
the process is a little bit different
between the two this is actually pretty
straightforward and it is necessary
because in powerbi you schedule a
refresh in the Cloud Server and the
cloud service does not have access to
your computer you can technically give
it access to your computer by installing
a Gateway but then you have to leave
your computer and the Gateway running
all the time for the scheduled refresh
to work and you want this thing to keep
running if you go on vacation anyway
okay and let's talk about one drive for
a second here too your one drive is like
your personal SharePoint storage you can
technically put your files in there for
this purpose but it's better to put it
in a SharePoint team site because your
one drive only exists as part of your
account so if you leave your
organization everything in there gets
deleted step two so you have your source
files in SharePoint and your PX file is
pointed at them now you need to publish
your report to the powerbi service
publishing your report is going to be
how you let other people view it without
having powerbi desktop installed this
will not Grant access to your report
except for people who are members of the
workspace that you publish it to so
don't worry about that it does need to
be published in order to schedule the
Refresh on it so we're going to do that
now you'll notice you have a personal
workspace to publish to this my
workspace here you can use that if you
absolutely need to however it is better
to use a shared team workspace if you
don't already have a shared workspace to
publish to you can create one so for me
if I go to workspaces on the left here
and then click on new workspace it will
let me create one and click apply and
you can add members with this manage
access button if you need to you get to
choose the role so whether they're a
viewer contributor or member by the way
if you're looking to Grant access to
your report don't be adding the
individual users as viewers of the
workspace that's not how you grant
access in powerbi it's much better to
share the specific report that you want
to Grant access to or to use an app so
I'm going to publish this
thing and when it's done publishing it's
going to give you a link to open in the
web service so I'm just going to click on
that and then to to get to the place
where I need to schedule refresh I click
on this ellipses menu up here go to view data
data
set and then I go to the refresh menu
here the little carrot next to it and
click on schedule
refresh you'll notice right away that it
says failed to test the connection to
your day Source please retry your
credentials this is totally normal for
SharePoint online sources what you do is
you have to set those credentials that
it's using because the web service
doesn't automatically know which
credentials it should be connecting to
the data with so we're going to click on
edit credentials and this is usually
pretty quick and easy you do need to
change this authentication method it
always defaults to Anonymous change it
to ooth 2 and then set your privacy
level this is usually going to be
organizational this is basically just
saying what type of data is this and
then click on sign
in select your
account and we're done with that part
there is a gateway section here if
you're using SharePoint online you do
not need to use a Gateway that is only
only necessary for data sources that
live on premise so SharePoint server SQL
Server that kind of thing now go down to
the refresh section and turn on your
refresh schedule here daily is a good
one to start with but you can also
choose weekly if you want and then set
your time zone and for the times it's
worthwhile to note that it's going to
automatically do your refresh at
midnight if you want it to refresh at
another time you need to specify that
here and it's a good idea to stagger
these so that not everything in your
organization is refreshing at the
default refresh time right because if
everything refreshes at the same time
it's much more likely to fail because
you have limited resources available to
work with on those refreshes so next set
a refresh failure notification it's
going to automatically go to you it is a
good idea to also email other people so
for instance a distribution group is a
good option here something where members
can be added and removed over time where
you don't have to go back into every
single data source and add and remove
people from the specific notifications
people very frequently skip this step
but it is actually really important
because if you leave your organization
your data refreshes are going to fail
and when they fail if the notifications
are only going to your account nobody
will know until your users are wondering
why the data is stale okay so one thing
that I kind of glossed over there that's
very important is that this refresh is
using your account this will work for
smaller projects short-term project
projects that kind of thing if you have
something that you want to outlast
yourself you probably want to look into
getting a service account that is used
to run the refresh so service account is
a licensed account that is not attached
to any one particular person so you can
schedule refreshes with the service
account you just take over the data set
essentially there's a takeover button
when the account views it if you do this
make sure to share any of the sources
that you are using with the service
account because it needs a read
permission on those to run the refresh
so if you're using a SharePoint Source
add that user to the SharePoint site it
would also need to be a data set owner
so the owner level of permissions on the
workspace in order to take over the data
set so click on apply in this section
and there's one more thing we need to do
before we're done here and that is to
share our report so this report that we
published is private to just the
workspace until we share it so if you
want other people to be able to see this
report as a viewer you need to share it
first I clicked on the report in the
left navigation if it doesn't show up
here for you just go to your workspaces
list under workspaces here and then go
to the workspace that you published to
and click on the share icon next to the
report so that's the one that says type
report next to it your options are
people in your organization with a link
so that's anybody who happens to have
the link can use it or specific people
and you can decide whether or not you
want them to be able to share the report
also or whether you want them to be able
to build with the content in the report
it's notable that the feature called
analyze with Excel which lets you open
the data set in Excel requires build
permission so if you want people to be
able to do that check this box and just
as an FYI you can let people export
things from your report to Excel without
this permission level it's just if you
want them to be able to connect to the
entire data set in Excel that this needs
to be done so click apply and then enter
the people's names that you want to
share it with distribution groups will
work here active directory groups will
work here Microsoft 365 groups will work
here or individual names so our refresh
is scheduled you can tell because this
column that says next refresh has a date
and time in it if it weren't scheduled
you wouldn't see anything here what I
like to do right away when I schedule a
new refresh is just test it in the
service to make sure it works so I click
on this refresh button here just to make
sure that it runs without any errors so
what this is doing when it refreshes is
it's going back and checking those Excel
files that we put in our SharePoint site
it's always better to work directly with
database sources when you're using
powerbi if you have that available but
I'm assuming if you're watching this
video that you are working with file
sources out of necessity so I want to
mention that it is possible to automate
the Excel export and upload process
using Microsoft 365 tools for example um
Power automate desktop is a tool that
has a screen recorder where it can
record what you are clicking on in a
browser and all of the steps that you do
to export files from a system I'm
planning on doing a video on that in the
future so if you want to be notified
when that comes out make sure to
subscribe thank you for watching and
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