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 is not automated and inefficient.
- ✓
Install and configure an on-premises data gateway and assign it to the dataset.
Why this is correct
On-premises data gateway enables connectivity for scheduled refresh.
- ✗
Change the data source to an Excel file stored in SharePoint Online.
Why it's wrong here
Changing source may not be feasible and doesn't address the gateway issue.
- ✗
Republish the Power BI report from Power BI Desktop.
Why it's wrong here
Republishing does not affect scheduled refresh.
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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.