PL-900 Practice Question: Describe the business value of Microsoft Power Platform
A company uses Power BI to analyze customer feedback from surveys. The data is stored in Excel on SharePoint. They want to refresh the report daily without manual intervention. Which feature should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse the on-premises data gateway (needed for local data sources) with the cloud-based scheduled refresh (needed for cloud data sources like SharePoint), or they overcomplicate the solution by choosing Power Automate when the built-in feature is sufficient.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Power BI scheduled refresh
Power BI scheduled refresh allows you to configure automatic, recurring data refreshes for datasets stored in the cloud (including Excel files on SharePoint). This eliminates the need for manual intervention by using the Power BI service to re-import the data at defined intervals, such as daily.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Power BI gateway
Why it's wrong here
Gateway is for on-premises data sources, not SharePoint online.
- ✗
DirectQuery mode
Why it's wrong here
DirectQuery requires a live connection, not suitable for Excel files.
- ✓
Power BI scheduled refresh
Why this is correct
Scheduled refresh automatically updates the dataset from SharePoint Excel files.
- ✗
Power Automate flow to refresh the dataset
Why it's wrong here
While possible, it's not the recommended simple approach; scheduled refresh is built-in.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PL-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PL-900 exam.