A power BI report that displays its own metadata, including refresh history
A crazy Power BI idea is in my head. It rather doesn’t make much practical sense, but such crazy ideas sometimes lead to useful solutions for the different problem.
A power BI report that displays its own metadata, including refresh history, including the most recent refresh error if refresh failed.
Crazy enough? Ha!
1) A composite model report with main data sources in import mode and one special table in direct query mode. Published into Power BI service.
2) A scheduled PowerShell* script that uses Power BI Cmdlets / REST API to get the refresh history and to insert it into the database table. Yeah, into the table that already connected to the report in direct query mode.
3) Now the report can display it’s own refresh history, including error details if refresh failed.
Am I crazy enough?
Just a quick test (not fully parsed/formatted):
*Power Automate will work as well.
I like crazy. Still trying to find out if this one is of any use in the real world – something you cannot get from the audit logs for example.
I’m searching for a way to get its own report name and couldn’t find a solution yet. but if you give the reportname/reportID manually then it is possible to get those data and more of it by the PowerBI restAPI