Incremental refresh in Power BI - Dashboard Guide

Dashboard Mode - Incremental refresh

Business Question

How can we efficiently update a large sales dataset in Power BI by refreshing only recent data instead of the entire dataset?

Sample Data: Sales Transactions

Date	Region	Product	Sales Amount
2023-01-05	North	Widget A	100
2023-01-15	South	Widget B	200
2023-02-10	East	Widget A	150
2023-03-20	West	Widget C	300
2023-04-05	North	Widget B	250
2023-04-25	South	Widget C	350
2023-05-10	East	Widget A	400

Dashboard Components

• KPI Card: Total Sales
  Formula: Total Sales = SUM('Sales'[Sales Amount])
  Result: 1750
• Line Chart: Sales Over Time
  X-axis: Date
  Y-axis: Total Sales (SUM of Sales Amount)
  Shows sales trend by date
• Table: Recent Sales Data
  Shows sales from last 60 days only (using incremental refresh policy)
  Columns: Date, Region, Product, Sales Amount
• Incremental Refresh Policy
  Configured to refresh only last 60 days of data
  Partitions data by Date column
  Historical data older than 60 days is not refreshed

Dashboard Layout

+----------------------+----------------------+
|      Total Sales      |   Sales Over Time    |
|       (KPI Card)      |     (Line Chart)     |
+----------------------+----------------------+
|               Recent Sales Data Table             |
+--------------------------------------------------+

Interactivity

The incremental refresh policy works behind the scenes to limit data refresh to recent dates only. Users can apply date filters or slicers on the dashboard to view sales for specific periods. The Total Sales KPI and Sales Over Time chart update dynamically based on these filters. The Recent Sales Data table always shows data within the last 60 days, reflecting the incremental refresh window.

Self Check

If you add a filter to show sales only for the last 30 days, which components update?

• The Total Sales KPI updates to sum sales in the last 30 days.
• The Sales Over Time chart updates to show only dates within the last 30 days.
• The Recent Sales Data table updates to show only rows from the last 30 days.

Key Result

A Power BI dashboard demonstrating incremental refresh by showing total sales, sales trend, and recent sales data with refresh limited to last 60 days.