Adding the Last Refreshed Date and Time to a Microsoft Power BI Report

Many clients will ask PPM Works to schedule refreshes to Power BI Reports published to a workspace. Report viewers typically do not know the refresh schedule so PPM Works has found a way to include this information in reports using a custom query. This allows users to see the last time the report was refreshed.

Steps to complete the query and add the visualization to a Power BI report:

  1. Open Power BI in the desktop for easy editing. From the Home ribbon, click Transform data.

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  1. Right click in the gray space below your queries.

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  1. Select New Query.
  2. Select Blank Query.

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  1. Select Advanced Editor on the ribbon.

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  1. Delete the existing query and replace with the one in the screenshot below and click Done to save your edits.

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  1. As a best practice I recommend you rename the query.  Right click on the new query (Query1).
  2. Select Rename. I chose to name my query LastRefreshed.

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  1. Click Close and Apply on the ribbon.

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  1. Once your query has been saved navigate to the Report screen if you are not already there. Select the Card visualization.

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  1. Select the Last Refresh field for the Card visualization.

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  1. Format as needed.

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Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to us for more information at info@ppmworks.com for additional tips.