We have Power BI tiles embedded in our material management workspace showing warehouse transfer metrics. The warehouse transfer transactions are being processed successfully throughout the day, but the embedded visuals are not updating in real time. The data appears stale, sometimes showing information from 6-8 hours ago.
Our warehouse operations team relies on these dashboards to make decisions about inventory movements and transfer priorities. The delay is causing confusion when the visual data doesn’t match what they see in the actual transfer orders.
Has anyone experienced similar issues with embedded Power BI visuals not refreshing properly in workspaces? The same reports refresh correctly when accessed directly through Power BI service.
Good question about performance. For warehouse operations where real-time visibility matters, every 1-2 hours is reasonable. However, be aware that each refresh does consume resources. Here’s what I recommend:
For the Power BI tiles embedded in your workspace, the refresh mechanism works through three layers that all need proper configuration:
Power BI Dataset Refresh: Your dataset in Power BI service should refresh at your desired frequency (you mentioned every hour, which is good). This pulls fresh data from D365 using the data entity or OData feed.
D365 Batch Job Configuration: The ‘Refresh Power BI tile cache’ batch job needs to run after your dataset refreshes. Set this to run every 1-2 hours with recurrence. Navigate to System administration > Inquiries > Batch jobs, find the Power BI refresh job, and ensure it’s in ‘Waiting’ status with proper recurrence settings.
Workspace Configuration: Verify that your material management workspace is correctly linked to the Power BI workspace. Go to System administration > Setup > Power BI configuration and confirm the workspace mapping is active.
For your warehouse transfer scenario specifically, since transactions are processed throughout the day, I’d recommend:
Power BI dataset refresh: Every 1 hour
D365 batch job: Every 1 hour (scheduled 15 minutes after dataset refresh)
This gives you near-real-time visibility without excessive resource consumption
One additional check: Ensure the service account used for Power BI integration has proper permissions to the data entities for warehouse transfers. If permissions are limited, the dataset might refresh but show incomplete data, making it appear stale.
After adjusting these settings, monitor for 24-48 hours to ensure the visuals are updating as expected. The manual refresh requirement you mentioned earlier should no longer be necessary once the batch job runs reliably.
This draft is based on general Microsoft Dynamics 365 knowledge. It has not been verified against your specific version and environment. Practitioners: verify the steps and share your experience below.
This is typically related to the Power BI dataset refresh schedule rather than the embedding itself. Check your dataset refresh settings in Power BI service - the embedded tiles will only show data as fresh as the last dataset refresh. If your dataset is scheduled to refresh every 8 hours, that explains the delay you’re seeing.
Thanks for the suggestion. I checked the Power BI dataset and it’s set to refresh every hour. The strange thing is when I open the same report directly in Power BI service, it shows current data. But the embedded version in the D365 workspace is definitely stale. Could there be caching happening at the workspace level?
Yes, there’s workspace-level caching involved. The Power BI tiles in D365 workspaces use a separate cache layer. You need to check the batch job ‘Refresh Power BI tile cache’ which should be running periodically. Go to System administration > Inquiries > Batch jobs and search for jobs related to Power BI refresh. If this batch job isn’t scheduled or is failing, your embedded tiles won’t update even if the Power BI dataset itself is fresh.
I’ve seen this exact scenario before. The issue is usually the batch job frequency. Even if your Power BI dataset refreshes hourly, if the D365 batch job that pulls those updates only runs every 6 hours, you’ll see that lag. Also check if the batch job is actually completing successfully - sometimes it runs but encounters errors that prevent the cache update.
Found it! The batch job was scheduled but set to run only twice per day. I’ve increased the frequency to every 2 hours. Should I go even more frequent, or is there a performance impact to consider with more frequent refreshes?
Tested this on D365 F&O 10.0.32 with Power BI Premium Per User, and configuring all three refresh layers — dataset, gateway, and workspace tile cache — eliminated our stale inventory data issue.