What it is
A missing refresh occurs when a semantic model was expected to refresh — based on its schedule, cadence, or operational requirements — but no refresh event was recorded. The refresh simply never ran.
Unlike a failed refresh (which starts and terminates with an error), a missing refresh produces no log entry at all. This makes it particularly dangerous because there is nothing to investigate in the Power BI portal.
Common causes include disabled schedules, expired gateway credentials, paused capacities, workspace migrations, and Power BI service incidents.
Why it matters for Power BI teams
- Reports serve increasingly stale data with no visible indication that a refresh was missed.
- There is no log entry or error message to trigger investigation — the absence itself is the problem.
- Business users assume data is current because they see no failure notification.
- Missing refreshes often go undetected for days, especially on datasets with daily or weekly cadences.
- The root cause (disabled schedule, expired credential) persists until someone notices manually.
Why Power BI doesn't catch it well
Power BI does not have a concept of "expected refresh." It records what happened, not what should have happened. If a refresh never starts, there is nothing to log.
There is no native alert for "refresh did not occur within expected window." Admins must define expectations externally and monitor against them.
The refresh history only shows completed and failed refreshes. A gap in the history is invisible unless someone manually notices the missing timestamps.
How teams detect it today
- Manually checking the "last refreshed" timestamp on critical datasets each day.
- Building Power Automate flows that check refresh history and flag gaps — complex to maintain at scale.
- Relying on users to report when they notice data seems outdated.
- Creating spreadsheets of expected refresh schedules and cross-referencing manually.
- Running REST API scripts on a timer to compare expected vs. actual refresh events.
How SummitView helps
- SummitView tracks expected refresh cadences and alerts when a dataset goes past its expected window without a refresh.
- Missing refresh detection works for all license types — Pro, PPU, and Fabric.
- Alerts include the dataset name, workspace, last successful refresh time, and how long overdue the refresh is.
- The agent continuously monitors refresh history, so gaps are caught within minutes rather than days.
- Historical tracking shows patterns of missing refreshes to identify systemic scheduling issues.