Guide on how to add Incremental Refresh to existing PowerBI files.
How to add Incremental Refresh settings to Endpoints
Follow these steps if you need to add Incremental Refresh to your existing file that doesn’t have Incremental Refresh configured yet.
1 Ensure the table has a suitable date field
Incremental Refresh requires a DateTime field to define the refresh window.
- In the HammerTech template, this is usually the Created Date or Added Date field
- The Detect Data Changes option can also use the LastModifiedDate field
- Using the LastModifiedDate as the primary refresh field can sometimes cause issues such as: * Duplicate rows when edits occur outside the archive window * Reduced performance benefits if more rows than expected are reprocessed
2 Create Range Parameters (if not already present)
In Power Query, check for the parameters RangeStart and RangeEnd.
- These parameters are required for Power BI Incremental Refresh to filter rows within the refresh window
- They are already included in the Incremental Refresh HammerTech Template
- If missing (e.g. when using a different file), create them via: Home > Manage Parameters > New Parameter
3 Filter the table using Range Parameters
In Power Query,
- Select the table you wish to configure for Incremental Refresh
- Apply filters to the suitable date field (from step 1)
- DateTime field ≥ RangeStart
- DateTime field ≤ RangeEnd
This ensures that only rows within the refresh window are processed during each refresh.
Note – Apply this filter as early as possible in your query steps so less data is processed downstream.
4 Close & Apply changes
5 Enable Incremental Refresh
In Power BI Desktop,
- Right click the table > Incremental Refresh
- In the dialog box, enable Incremental Refresh and configure the windows * Archive window – e.g. 5 years (historical data stored but not updated) * Refresh window – e.g. 1 year (data within this period is refreshed/updated each cycle)
- Enable Detect Data Changes and select LastModifiedDate. This ensures that if a record within the refresh window is edited, it will be updated in the dataset.
6 Save the PBIX file and publish to Power BI Service.