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PorcuBI
Most Valuable Professional
‎03-26-2025 11:14 AM

Refresh on change detection - Real-time data & Power BI

When analyzing real-time data, it's important to work with fresh, updated information while avoiding unnecessary refreshes that could waste resources. For instance, if new data arrives only every five minutes, refreshing the entire report ten times a minute is excessive. This is where change detection for page refreshes in Power BI becomes helpful!

 

Why use a Power BI report instead of a real-time dashboard? 

Real-time dashboards in Fabric provide an excellent way to visualize near real-time data. However, each refresh reloads all the data, which can be inefficient. For instance, if you set a refresh interval of 10 seconds, the system pulls all the data again every 10 seconds, even if there are no changes. To optimize this, we want to refresh only when meaningful changes occur. This approach allows for effective data analysis and interaction without overloading your system or causing unnecessary refreshes.

 

How to use Power BI in combination with real-time data? 

When you build a report using DirectQuery in Power BI (this does not work with Import mode), you have 2 page refresh options:

  • Auto Page Refresh: This option updates everything at a set interval, which can be inefficient if new data is infrequent and is similar to what we see in the Fabric real-time dashboards.
  • Change Detection: This option refreshes only when a specific field shows an update, making it ideal for scenarios where for example, data only arrives every few minutes. You can pick the field yourself, allowing you to configure the refresh yourself.

Change detection allows you to set a check interval, such as every 15 seconds. However, the page only refreshes when new data is detected. This ensures that your analysis always reflects the most recent information without unnecessary refreshing.

 

How to enable it? 

 

  • Click on your report page in Power BI Desktop.
  • Open the Format pane (by clicking anywhere outside the visuals).
  • Scroll down to Page refresh.

Choose:

  • Change Detection: Refreshes only when a selected field updates.
Change detection Refresh in Power BIChange detection Refresh in Power BIChange Detection ConfigurationChange Detection Configuration

 

 

Summary and video

For data analysis, you don’t need to continuously refresh your report if new data isn’t available frequently. Power BI’s change detection option makes sure that your report refreshes only when necessary.

I created this video to show you step-by-step how to configure change detection auto refreshes in Power BI.

 

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