Low severitydata quality
Power BI Refresh Error:
Source Freshness: warn threshold exceeded
What does this error mean?
dbt's source freshness check determined that a source table has not been updated within the configured warn_after window but has not yet reached the error_after threshold. The job exits with a warning state — not a failure — but the source data is older than expected.
Common causes
- 1The upstream pipeline (Fivetran, ADF, Airbyte) ran late and loaded data outside the warn_after window
- 2The `warn_after` threshold is set too tightly relative to the actual data arrival pattern of the source
- 3The source system had a brief outage or delay that pushed the latest load timestamp past the warn window
- 4The `loaded_at_field` column reflects event time rather than load time, causing an apparent freshness lag
- 5Timezone differences between the source data timestamps and the warehouse cause freshness to appear worse than it is
How to fix it
- 1Query the source table directly to confirm the actual latest timestamp: `SELECT MAX(<loaded_at_field>) FROM <source_schema>.<table_name>`.
- 2Check the upstream pipeline run history to determine whether the load actually ran late or whether the `loaded_at_field` is the wrong column.
- 3Adjust the `warn_after` threshold in sources.yml to better reflect the SLA of the upstream pipeline, with sufficient buffer for normal variance.
- 4If the freshness lag is consistent and expected, increase `warn_after` to avoid alert fatigue while keeping `error_after` tight enough to catch real outages.
- 5Verify the `loaded_at_field` is the warehouse load timestamp, not the source system event timestamp.