The Export History tab is where you go to understand how Power BI is consuming your data sources. Every OData read against a data source — whether triggered by Power BI Desktop or by a scheduled refresh in the Power BI service — is logged here.
Open the tab #
Open History in the side navigation and switch to Export History.
What each row tells you #
One row per OData read. The columns describe the request and its outcome:
- Date — when the request arrived.
- User — the account that owns the access token used. This is the connector user, not the Power BI user.
- Data source — name and ID of the data source that was hit.
- Token — label of the access token used. Label your tokens descriptively (see Create an access token) so this column is readable.
- Status — HTTP status the connector returned (200, 401, 403, 5xx).
- Duration — round-trip time of the connector request, including the SAP back-end call.
Common things you’ll spot here #
- Did the scheduled refresh fire? — filter by your Power BI service refresh token label and check the most recent dates.
- Why does the dataset look stale? — look for 401/403 around the time the refresh should have happened. Stale data often means the token was revoked or expired and Power BI silently stopped refreshing.
- Who’s hitting this data source the most? — sort by the data source column and count rows per token label.
Export History records read requests against the consumer OData endpoint — the URL Power BI uses. Browsing the data source inside the connector UI (the Preview button) doesn’t generate a row.
Related #
- View activity history — the other two tabs cover data-source and token lifecycle.
- Schedule refresh in Power BI service
