Important: This post was written and published in 2020, and the content below may no longer represent the current capabilities of Power BI. Please consider this post to be more of an historical record and less of a technical resource. All content on this site is the personal output of the author and not an official resource from Microsoft.
Back in August I highlighted the new dataflows PowerShell script repo on GitHub. These scripts provide an accelerated starting point to working with the dataflows REST APIs and to automate common dataflows tasks.
This week the dataflows team has released two new REST APIs for managing dataflows transactions (think “refresh”) and a new parameterized PowerShell script to make using the APIs easier.
You can find the APIs documented here and the PowerShell script here.
The most exciting thing about these APIs and scripts[1] is that they enable one of the most frequently requested capabilities: you can now trigger a dataset refresh (or the refresh of a dataflow in another workspace) when a dataflow refresh completes.
Boom.
If you’re reading this and are thinking “that’s all well and good, but I don’t want to use an API or PowerShell[2]” please don’t fret. The Power BI team is working on non-API-based experiences to make the end-to-end refresh experience simpler and more complete. I can’t share dates or details here before they’re publicly announced, but I did want to share proactively before anyone asked about a code-free UX for refresh orchestration.
Update December 2020: There’s now a Power Automate connector that will let you do this without writing any code.
[1] And the best thing to happen in 2020 so far, if James Ward is to be believed.
[2] Or even “this should be ‘clicky-clicky-draggy-droppy’ and not ‘typey-typey-scripty-codey’.”