A quick post today about Last refresh Data/Time on a Power BI Service.

The Last Refresh Date/Time alerts users how new the data is for the report. You can visualize the Last refresh Date/Time with a card that shows the date and time that the data for the report was last updated.

On Power BI Desktop and Power BI Report Server, you can use  DateTime.LocalNow() to get the Last refresh Date/Time for a report. When you publish the same report to Power BI Service, you will get an incorrect refresh Date/Time. Here is a quick way to workaround it, using the DateTimeZone.SwitchZone:

Step 1. Create a new query in the Power query editor and add the following code:

Power BI service time is in UTC, so edit the last parameter in the M Query above depending on your Time zone, before publishing the report to Power BI Service.

Step 2. Visualize the Last refresh with a card on Power BI Desktop and do a manual refresh:

Step 3. Publish the report to Power BI Service and pin the card visual to a Dashboard.

After each scheduled refresh of the dataset, the card visual will automatically update on the Dashboard.

Note: The update for the Last Refresh Date/Time only works on Power BI Service when the card is pinned to a Dashboard. If you want to see the update on a Report after the dataset refresh, you will have to refresh the browser page each time.

Happy reporting 🙂