Operational dashboards that stay current within a few minutes

Last updated 20 October 2026

An operational dashboard needs to reflect what changed a few minutes ago, and querying SharePoint directly on a tight schedule is slow and gets throttled.

A screen on an operations floor showing open incidents by stage, pending approvals and the oldest unassigned item is only useful if it shows this morning’s queue. Refreshed overnight from SharePoint lists, it is stale by ten o’clock. Refreshed every minute straight from SharePoint, it gets throttled once a dozen people open the same dashboard, and each refresh still pays SharePoint’s cost of resolving lookups item by item.

One sync, many viewers

SPSync polls SharePoint once, on a schedule as short as a few minutes, and writes the result to a database table. The dashboard queries that table as often as it likes. SharePoint sees one well-behaved job that honours Retry-After and meters its own resource use; the dashboard sees a fast SQL table, however many people are watching.

How fresh the board will be

On the default five-minute schedule, the board is within a few minutes of SharePoint. That is close enough for an operations floor, and it is the accurate description: a schedule, with no real-time push. How short the schedule can usefully go depends on list size and on the tenant’s Graph throttling headroom. Below a couple of minutes, check that headroom first.

Counting by status without a lookup per row

The lists behind the board replicate as tables. When status or category is a lookup in SharePoint, it is a key column in the database, so “open incidents by status” is a GROUP BY over a join. Person columns resolve into the shared sp_users table, which makes “assigned to me” views simple. An item removed from the queue keeps its row with sp_deleted_at set, so it still counts in the closed totals and history does not shrink.

Include the status and category lists when you pick the operational lists, so the joins resolve. Point the dashboard at the destination database and let it refresh on its own short interval. A board other people rely on should not depend on one person’s laptop, so run the sync from SPSync in your Azure or from the command line on a server.

spsync auth login --client-id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
spsync export-config --output replication.yaml --pipeline-name kpi_dashboards --prefix kpi_dashboards --destination-kind postgres --connection-string-env SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION --dataset-name kpi_dashboards --client-id 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --site-url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/example --all-lists
spsync doctor replication.yaml
spsync run replication.yaml

pipeline_name: kpi_dashboards
prefix: kpi_dashboards
auth:
  mode: delegated
  client_id: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
  tenant_id: common
destination:
  kind: postgres
  connection_string_env: SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION
  dataset_name: kpi_dashboards
scopes:
  - site_url: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/example
    mode: entire_site
reconcile_interval_days: 7
create_reporting_views: false

# every night at 02:00
0 2 * * * cd /opt/spsync && SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION="$(cat /etc/spsync/db.env)" uv run spsync run replication.yaml >> /var/log/spsync/run.log 2>&1

# .github/workflows/spsync-run.yml
name: SPSync
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 2 * * *"
  workflow_dispatch: {}
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v3
      - run: uv sync
      - run: uv run spsync run replication.yaml
        env:
          SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION: ${{ secrets.SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION }}
          SPSYNC_LICENCE_KEY: ${{ secrets.SPSYNC_LICENCE_KEY }}

# azure-pipelines.yml
schedules:
  - cron: "0 2 * * *"
    branches: { include: [main] }
    always: true
steps:
  - script: uv sync
  - script: uv run spsync run replication.yaml
    env:
      SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION: $(SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION)
      SPSYNC_LICENCE_KEY: $(SPSYNC_LICENCE_KEY)

# Windows Task Scheduler action (see /docs/cli/automation/)
$env:SPSYNC_DB_CONNECTION = (Get-Content C:\spsync\db.env)
uv run spsync run C:\spsync\replication.yaml
schtasks /Create /SC DAILY /ST 02:00 /TN "SPSync" /TR "powershell -File C:\spsync\run.ps1"

# ~/Library/LaunchAgents/io.spsync.run.plist, then: launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/io.spsync.run.plist