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ClickRuntime

Automate Power BI

Keep your Power BI datasets fresh and find out when they aren't. Refreshes start when your data load finishes instead of at a fixed time, and failed refreshes are reported before anyone opens a stale report. Describe what you want to your AI assistant, check what it will do, and it keeps running with your laptop closed.

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Try asking

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, check the datasets in my Power BI Finance workspace and email me if the latest refresh of any of them failed, once per failure.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Ideas

What you can automate in Power BI

Warnings when a dataset refresh fails, and refreshes you can start from a link the moment new data is ready. These are ready-made starting points. Anything else you can describe works too.
Hourly

Get an email when a dataset refresh fails

You hear about a failed refresh once, before anyone reads yesterday's numbers.

See how it works
The moment it happens

Refresh a dataset when your data load finishes

Your report updates right after new data lands, and you get an email saying whether it worked.

See how it works Your own logic

Any other automation you can describe in words

Your own rules, schedule and AI steps with Power BI, plus any other app. Describe it and your assistant builds it.

See how to build your own

Build your own

Build any Power BI automation you can describe

The ideas above are ready-made starting points, not a fixed list. Describe what Power BI should do in your own words, with your conditions, other apps or an AI step, and your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

For example, ask your assistant

Every hour, refresh our sales dataset in Power BI and tell me if the refresh fails.

Every 15 minutes, push new rows from a Google Sheet into a Power BI push dataset.

Each night, pull yesterday's Stripe payments and HubSpot deals, combine them and push the totals to a Power BI dataset.

Beyond chat

Have Power BI work when you're not in the chat

Connecting Power BI to ChatGPT or Claude lets you ask about it while you chat. ClickRuntime handles the part that should happen on its own: checks on a schedule and actions on each new event, set up from the same chat and running after you close it.

Setup

Connect Power BI

You connect Power BI with a service principal: an app registration you create in Microsoft Entra and add to the workspaces it should use. A tenant admin needs to allow service principals once.

Power BI

BI / Analytics

  1. In Microsoft Entra, go to App registrations, create a new single-tenant app and add a client secret. You don't need to add Power BI API permissions for this setup.
  2. In the Fabric or Power BI Admin portal, under Tenant settings → Developer settings, enable "Service principals can use Fabric APIs" and limit it to a security group that contains the app.
  3. In each Power BI workspace the automation should use, open Manage access and add the app as Member or Contributor.
  4. In the ClickRuntime dashboard, open Connections, choose Power BI and enter the Tenant ID, Client ID and client secret.

Good to know

Power BI limits that affect automations

  • The app only sees workspaces where it has been added as Member, Contributor or Admin.
  • My Workspace can't be used with a service principal, so keep the datasets in a shared workspace.
  • The number of dataset refreshes per day depends on your Power BI license, and a refresh started from a link counts toward the same limit as scheduled ones.
  • Refreshes run in the background, so the automation checks the refresh status until it finishes before reporting the result.

FAQ

Questions about automating Power BI

What can ClickRuntime see in Power BI?
Only the workspaces you added the app to. There it can list datasets, read their refresh history and start a refresh. Reading needs Member access, and starting refreshes needs Member or Contributor.
Why a service principal instead of signing in?
It isn't tied to one person's account, so automations keep working when someone leaves or changes their password, and an admin decides exactly which workspaces it can reach.
Why doesn't it find datasets in My Workspace?
Power BI doesn't let service principals use My Workspace. Move the dataset to a shared workspace and add the app there.
Can my data pipeline trigger a refresh?
Yes. The automation gives you a link. When your load job calls it, the refresh starts, and you get an email once it has finished or failed.
Do I need AI for Power BI automations?
No. Refresh alerts and triggered refreshes run without it. AI comes with every ClickRuntime plan, so you don't need your own AI key.
Is this a Power BI connector for ChatGPT or Claude?
Not for chatting with Power BI data. A chat connector lets your assistant read and change Power BI while you're in the conversation. ClickRuntime is for the work that should happen without you: you set up an automation from the chat once, and it keeps running on a schedule or on each Power BI event.

Related pages

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