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Enhanced refresh with the Power BI REST API is now generally available

Headshot of article author Ogbemi Ekwejunor-Etchie

We’re excited to move Enhanced refresh with the Power BI REST API (formerly asynchronous refresh) from public preview to general availability in Power BI Premium, Power BI Premium per User, and Power BI Embedded. As noted in the public preview announcement, this feature not only eliminates the need for synchronous client connections to perform a refresh, but also unlocks enterprise-grade refresh capabilities. It’s a significant improvement over the standard refresh REST API in Power BI. By using the enhanced refresh REST API, you can leverage built in features for refresh management, reliability, and granularity as shown by the following examples.

  • Cancel an in-progress refresh operation.
  • Check the status of historical, current, and pending refreshes.
  • Refresh individual tables and individual partitions.
  • Batched commits with restarts so long refreshes do not need to start from the beginning in cases of transient failure.
  • Application of incremental refresh policy.
  • Control the Analysis Services refresh type for other fine-grained options.

We encourage you to leverage the enhanced refresh REST API for your large model data refresh operations.

Be sure to visit the documentation page for details on how to use the REST API for Power BI. It covers how to perform asynchronous refreshes, check status, and cancel a refresh as necessary. Additionally, the C# RestApiSample code sample is provided to help you get started.