Add a Refresh Button in Power BI (Let Users Refresh Data On Demand)
Did you know you can add a Refresh button directly inside a Power BI report?
This allows users to refresh the semantic model on demand, without needing to go to the Service or switch to Excel.
In this video, I show how to set it up using the Power Automate visual.
What you’ll learn
• How to add a refresh button to a Power BI report
• How to create an Instant cloud flow
• How to trigger a dataset refresh from the report
• How to show the last refresh time
• When this approach is useful
Step-by-step overview
• Add a card with last refresh time
• Insert Power Automate visual
• Create a new flow
• Use “Refresh a dataset” action
• Select workspace and dataset
• Save and test
Important things to keep in mind
• Each click triggers a dataset refresh
• Be careful when using this with large models
• Consider using a separate smaller dataset for frequent refreshes
When to use this
• data needs to be fresh, but not in real-time
• reports are used occasionally
• DirectQuery is too slow or too expensive
With this approach:
• one user refreshes
• everyone sees updated data
• users can decide if another refresh is needed