How to Refresh Power BI Report Every 15 Minutes

Chaining yourself to Power BI’s default refresh schedule can leave you looking at data that’s hours old. For fast-moving operations, sales, or marketing campaigns, that’s not good enough. This tutorial will walk you through a couple of reliable methods for refreshing your Power BI reports as often as every 15 minutes, ensuring your decisions are based on the freshest data possible.

Understanding Power BI’s Native Refresh Options

Before jumping into workarounds, it’s helpful to understand how Power BI is designed to handle data updates out of the box. There are two primary types of datasets: Import and DirectQuery/Live Connection.

Most people use the Import method, where a copy of your data is loaded into the Power BI service. This makes reports fast and responsive because the data is cached.

However, this comes with refresh limitations:

• Power BI Pro License: You can schedule up to 8 refreshes per 24 hours for each dataset. This is far from a 15-minute interval.
• Power BI Premium License: This bumps you up to 48 refreshes per 24 hours, which gets you to a 30-minute interval, but still a step short of our goal.

The second method, DirectQuery or Live Connection, doesn't import and store data. Instead, it queries the original data source directly every time a user interacts with the report. While this provides near real-time data, it puts a heavy load on your source database, can make reports feel sluggish, and has several DAX and data transformation limitations.

So, how do we get the best of both worlds - a speedy Import Mode report that updates on a 15-minute cycle? The answer lies in looking outside the default scheduler.

Method 1: Use Power Automate for High-Frequency Refreshes

The most flexible and common way to achieve refreshes more frequently than the standard schedule allows is by using Power Automate (which used to be called Microsoft Flow). This approach uses Power BI's API to trigger a refresh and is not bound by the same 8 or 48 refreshes-per-day limit that the built-in scheduler is. This makes it the perfect solution for our needs.

Follow these steps to set up your 15-minute refresh flow.

Step 1: Get Started in Power Automate

Navigate to https://make.powerautomate.com/ and log in with your Microsoft account. On the left sidebar, click on Create, then select Scheduled cloud flow from the main options.

Step 2: Configure the Flow’s Schedule

A new window will pop up where you’ll set the timing for your flow. This is where the magic happens.

• Flow name: Give your flow a descriptive name, like "Refresh Sales Dashboard Every 15 Mins."
• Starting: Choose today's date and a time you want it to start.
• Repeat every: Enter 15 in the box and select Minute from the dropdown menu.

Once you’ve configured this, click Create.

Step 3: Add the Power BI Action

You now have a blank flow that runs on your desired schedule. The next step is to tell it what to do - refresh your dataset.

Click the + New step button. In the search box that appears, type "Power BI" and select the Power BI connector from the list of options.

Under the "Actions" tab, you’ll see several options. The one we need is Refresh a dataset. Click to select it.

Step 4: Select Your Dataset

Power Automate will prompt you to sign in to your Power BI account if you haven’t already. Once connected, you’ll see two dropdown menus:

• Workspace: Select the Power BI workspace where your report's dataset is stored. This might be "My Workspace" or a shared departmental workspace.
• Dataset: Select the specific dataset you want to refresh. It should have the same name as your Power BI report by default.

After you’ve selected both, your step should look complete. Simply click Save at either the top or bottom right of the screen.

Step 5: Test and Activate Your Flow

Your flow is now saved and active! It will automatically start running every 15 minutes. To make sure everything is working as expected, you can click the Test button in the top-right corner. Choose "Manually" and run the test. If it completes successfully, head over to your Power BI workspace, find your dataset, and check its refresh history to confirm that a refresh was triggered by Power Automate.

Pros and Cons of the Power Automate Method:

• Pros: A "set it and forget it" solution, works for Power BI Pro and Premium, very reliable, lets you bypass the 8/48 daily limit on scheduled refreshes. You can also add more steps, like sending you a notification on Teams or email if the refresh fails.
• Cons: Relies on a separate service (Power Automate), which might be unfamiliar to some users. Very high usage could eventually have a cost implication for some licenses.

Method 2: Automatic Page Refresh for DirectQuery Sources

If your report uses a DirectQuery data connection instead of Import Mode, you have another powerful option built directly into Power BI: Automatic page refresh.

This is designed specifically for monitoring scenarios where you need visual-level updates as soon as the source data changes. Instead of refreshing the entire dataset, Power BI will re-run the queries needed to update the visuals on a specific report page.

When to Use This Method

This method is only an option if you’re using DirectQuery with a supported data source (like SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Snowflake, etc.). It’s the ideal choice for operational dashboards where you need an up-to-the-second view of data - think a factory floor monitoring dashboard or a real-time call center queue.

How to Set Up Automatic Page Refresh

Setting this up is done directly in Power BI Desktop.

1. Open your Power BI report that uses a DirectQuery data source.
2. Go to the page you want to have automatically refresh. Note: you have to set this up on a page-by-page basis.
3. With no specific visual selected, click the Format your report page icon in the Visualizations pane (it looks like a paint roller).
4. Find the Page refresh card at the bottom of the list. Toggle it to On.
5. Set the Refresh type to "Auto page refresh."
6. Under Refresh interval, you can define how often the page updates. Enter 15 and select Minutes from the dropdown.

After you publish this report to the Power BI service, that page will automatically refresh all its visuals every 15 minutes without any user interaction.

Pros and Cons of Automatic Page Refresh

• Pros: A truly real-time solution built for monitoring, easy to set up inside Power BI Desktop, doesn’t involve any other external tools.
• Cons: Only works with DirectQuery sources, increases the load on your source database with constant queries, and can cause a performance lag for users interacting with the report.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, getting your Power BI data down to a 15-minute refresh cycle is very achievable. For most users running on imported data, the Power Automate method offers a robust and flexible solution that sidesteps Power BI’s native scheduling limits. For those with DirectQuery setups, the built-in Automatic Page Refresh feature delivers a seamless real-time experience.

Managing workflows, checking capacities, and dealing with dataset settings can often feel like you spend more time maintaining reports than actually getting value from them. At our company, we built Graphed to solve this very problem. We provide live dashboards that are always up-to-date by connecting directly to your marketing and sales platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce. Your data streams in automatically in real-time, so you can stop worrying about refresh intervals altogether and focus on the insights.