Automating a manually triggered flow - Power BI report export to Excel

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by JD-24011310-0

I have a simple Power BI report to extract Labor head count from our SQL database. I created a button that uses Power Automate to export the result dataset to an excel file using the add row to excel template. It works very well.

I would like to run the same export on a routine basis, but without the manual trigger. I have not been successful in creating a flow to do this.

I would like to use a scheduled trigger to every week take the result dataset from the report, that has already refreshed, and export it the same way it does manually.

I have not found the way to do this yet, and I have tried many things, only to get lost "down the rabbit holes"...

Is there a "go into the report and click the button" action?

Is there a different solution?

John

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (3)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

NsL Coder 475 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

You can do a scheduled trigger, then query power bi to get the data you want and save to excel

If you don't know how to write a query, you can use tool in power bi desktop to get the query:

go to the tab that has the report you want to export, click on Start recording > Refresh visuals. Then find the "Table" expand it and click Copy Query

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
lbendlin 8,479 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Apply to Each is very inefficient. Use the Batch API to insert rows in bulk.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
NsL Coder 475 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report
For low coder, using the apply to each and add one row at a time make sense. This make sense also when the amount of data is not overwhelming, ~50 a run is within reason.

However, anymore, then writing all records to excel in ONE fell scoop is more time efficient, and there are a few ways to do this:

Excel Script, this can intake all the data as JSON and then more efficiently write the data into excel

Graph API, this allows you to provide a 2-dimenstional array that is all the rows and columns of data to write into excel

not aware of this "Batch API" unless we are talking about the same thing (Graph API)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/excel-write-to-workbook

Was this reply helpful? Yes No