Publish and Setup Data Refresh for your ADO Report
Publishing a Power BI report and setting up data refreshes through the Azure DevOps analytics interface is one of the last steps to go live with the report. This blog post will guide you through the essential steps to publish and setup data refresh for your Power BI report and configure the necessary credentials for accessing the Azure DevOps analytics interface. By following these instructions, you will be able to automate data refreshes, ensuring that your reports are always up-to-date with the latest insights from your Azure DevOps projects.
Publish the Report
To publish a report to the Power BI workspace, you need to have either the Member or Contributor role, which grants the necessary permissions to publish, edit, and manage content. Additionally, a Power BI Pro license is required if the workspace is not in a Premium capacity, as this license enables sharing and collaboration features. Once you have the appropriate permissions and license, you can proceed with publishing the report to the workspace. Here is a link on providing permissions to the workspace. Once the permissions are established, you can publish the report to the workspace.
Select the Publish button. The dialog appears to search for the workspace to publish the report. Select the workspace and publish the report.
The report and the semantic model are published into the workspace during the publish action. If there is an existing semantic model in the workspace, you will be prompted to overwrite the model. This is fine. It will overwrite the model with data that is in your report. The next data refresh will update the data in the model.
Data Source Credentials
Navigate to the Power BI workspace where the report and semantic model were published. There is a link in the dialog after the report is published that opens the workspace.
Hover over the semantic model and select the ellipse, or three periods. Select the Settings option.
Expand the Data Source Credentials section.
If your report is using Analytic Views, enter your Organization ID. Otherwise, you will be prompted to enter a PAT token for ODATA queries.
The type of connection to the ADO analytics determines the authentication method. For instance, an ODATA or Analytics View can use either a PAT token or an ADO Organizational account. Using an API call or Power BI dataflow require different authentication methods.
An ADO Organizational account is tied to an individual’s Entra or AD account. A PAT token has a limited exposure and a lifespan on the length of time before the token must be renewed. The PAT token only requires the Analytic scope in ADO.
Enter the authentication information for each connection.
OAuth2 – Using an ADO Organizational Account:
Using a PAT Token:
Data Refresh Intervals:
Once the report is published, its data refresh schedule must be established . The Refresh option is not enabled until the Data Source Credentials are added to the Power BI service for the report.
Enable the Data Refresh by toggling to On.
Set the time zone to your time zone. Otherwise calculate from UTC.
Add the times you want the semantic model to refresh. The number of times per day the semantic model can refresh is based on the Power BI licensing. Here is information on setting up the data refresh.
Add other contacts besides the semantic model owner’s information to receive an email if the data model does not refresh.
Select Apply.
Fini!