For your Power BI Dashboards to show real-time data, you can combine direct Query and scheduled refresh. Direct Query allows the dashboard to take data directly from a database without bringing it up to Power BI memory. Updates to the source system can be reflected in near real-time on your dashboard. Scheduled refresh works best because it is set for frequent intervals (15 minutes, for instance) and keeps the cached data updated but balances performance and load on the data source.
Real-time tracking of user activity with tools such as Azure Stream Analytics or APIs would be ideal. Real-time event data from sources such as IoT hubs or event hubs is processed through Azure Stream Analytics and then visualized in Power BI. In case you have custom user activity logs, APIs could be used to stream into a service like Azure SQL or Cosmos DB, set up for real-time data queries in Power BI.
To visualize real-time activities efficiently, optimize the dashboard layout and visuals to key metrics, such as card visuals for critical KPIs, tables for activity logs, and clustered charts for trends. Keep the engagement to simple activities and sparse visuals to optimize performance. Moreover, increasing the volume of user activity data should not bother any system but rely purely on the native incremental refresh and hybrid models of Power BI.
