PL-900 Practice Question: Describe the business value of Microsoft Power Platform
Your company has a Power BI dashboard that displays sales data from a SQL Server database hosted on-premises. The dashboard is used by the sales team to monitor daily performance. Recently, the dashboard has been showing stale data. The data is supposed to refresh every night at 2:00 AM. You have confirmed that the SQL Server database is updated with new data each night. However, the Power BI dataset refresh fails. You need to ensure that the dashboard shows up-to-date data every morning. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often think republishing the report (Option D) will fix the refresh issue, but they overlook that the scheduled refresh relies on a persistent gateway connection, not the report file itself.
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
✓
Install and configure an on-premises data gateway and assign it to the dataset.
An on-premises data gateway is required to bridge the connection between Power BI (a cloud service) and an on-premises SQL Server database. Since the dataset refresh fails despite the database being updated, the gateway is either missing or misconfigured. Installing and configuring the gateway allows the scheduled refresh to access the on-premises data source securely, ensuring the dashboard displays up-to-date data each morning.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disable scheduled refresh and manually refresh the dataset every morning.
Why it's wrong here
Manual refresh replaces the failing scheduled refresh with human intervention, so stale data returns whenever nobody triggers it; the requirement is automatic morning freshness. Manual refresh is tempting as an immediate workaround, but it does not repair the underlying gateway or credential failure causing the scheduled refresh to fail.
- ✓
Install and configure an on-premises data gateway and assign it to the dataset.
Why this is correct
An on-premises data gateway brokers the refresh connection between the Power BI service and the internal SQL Server, which is unreachable directly from the cloud; assigning it to the dataset lets the 2:00 AM refresh succeed.
- ✗
Change the data source to an Excel file stored in SharePoint Online.
Why it's wrong here
Switching to a SharePoint-hosted Excel file abandons the on-premises SQL Server source entirely and introduces manual upload dependency, so data freshness is not guaranteed. Excel in SharePoint is tempting for cloud-native refresh, but the stem requires the existing SQL Server data to refresh automatically each night.
- ✗
Republish the Power BI report from Power BI Desktop.
Why it's wrong here
Republishing overwrites the report definition but leaves the dataset's refresh configuration and credentials untouched, so the scheduled refresh continues to fail. Republishing is tempting after desktop edits, yet it does not address the on-premises data gateway or credential problem blocking the 2:00 AM refresh.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every PL-900 question from scratch — 701 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.