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Wait until current Dataflow refresh has completed

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Posted on by ChemEnger

I have a simple Flow that is triggered by a 'When a file is added or modified' for an Excel workbook in a network folder (not SharePoint) and refreshes a Power BI Dataflow.

The file is saved fairly frequently, generally by operators pressing save during operations. The first time save is pressed, the refresh will complete but as the refresh takes longer than the interval between saves, subsequent refreshes will fail, with the error: The backend request failed with error code '400'. The Flow has now been disabled due the number of failures.

Below is a screengrab example of the problem:

Is there a way to either wait until a refresh in progress has completed (preferable) or wait until a set time of day (outside of working hours for example) and run one refresh, ignoring other triggers.

The workbook is only saved maybe twice a week and/but I'd like the Dataflow to be refreshed as soon as possible after the file is updated.

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trice602 16,228 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @ChemEnger ,

There are a couple of ways you can do this, the first would be an easy fix.

1) Change your trigger to run once an hour M-F from 6 A - 6 PM (example). That will prevent your flow from stepping on concurrent runs and you still get an hourly update 12x/day.

2) Another other is to add an sequence of steps in your current flow that checks the last modified date/time. As an example, you could see of the file was modified more than 15 minutes ago and if true, refresh your dataflow or terminate action. In this process, you get more interactive real-time refreshes but you only look to update once every 15 minutes.

On this action if you are refreshing your dataflow now from the 2nd option above and your flow triggers again, because you are inside the 15 minute window, your conditional action would be false and you skip a concurrent refresh.

My 1st option is typically more than enough. Just inform your uses your dataset refresh hourly. But option 2 also works.

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ChemEnger 13 on at

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Thanks @trice602,

I reckon Option 1 is going to be easiest by far. I was looking for something fancier but a routine refresh will do just fine (and be more frequent than the file update itself). Option 2 would probably be slightly worse, as by definition the latest save would be the latest data, so I wouldn't want to pull the not-the-latest-save data.

I also include the file save date/time in the BI report, so the end users will get at least an idea of how fresh the data is!

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