Flow Snack: Refresh Power BI

Case
Exiting news from the Microsoft Power Platform. You can now use Microsoft Flow to refresh a Power BI dataset. How does it work and why would you want to use it?

Refresh a Power BI dataset

Solution
Until now you could schedule your refresh or do a manual refresh in Power BI, but now you can also use Flow to trigger a refresh when new data arrives. For example when a new source file arrives in OneDrive, DropBox, SharePoint or a Azure Blob Storage Container. But the list of triggers in Flow is nearly endless and the number of possible sources in Power BI is growing steadily so most likely one of these sources fits your needs.


1) Choose your trigger
First choose a trigger to refresh your dataset. In this example the trigger is 'When a blob is added or modified' in the Azure Blob Storage container.

Trigger when new data arrives in a Blob Storage container

2) Search for Power BI
Add a new action and search for Power BI and select Refresh a dataset. Note that it is still a Preview version and could change.

Refresh a Power BI dataset

3) Choose Workspace and Dataset
Now you must select your workspace and then the dataset in that workspace. After that save your Flow and check whether it is turned on and then start testing it by adding new files.

Select Workspace and Dataset that needs to be refreshed

Summary
An exiting new feature where you can use all kinds of triggers to refresh your Power BI dataset. Note that the refresh limitations still applies. So for PRO you have a maximum number of 8 refreshes a day and that is including any scheduled refreshes.