New idea exchange ideas in Microsoft Fabric Community

Default Scrollable Time-Series Charts to Most Recent Data

CStillwell — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:24:00 GMT

Currently, Power BI time-series charts always open scrolled to the earliest (leftmost) date by default, which is inconvenient for reports where users are interested in the most recent (rightmost) date. A setting such as "Default view to latest data" would improve usability and align with how most users consume trend data.

Please add an option for time-series charts to:

Set the default scroll position (earliest date or most recent date).
Remember the last scroll position when navigating between report pages.

This feature would significantly improve usability for time-series charts.

Power BI Desktop Data Load: Can We Get Better Progress Visibility?

salmansaifee77 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:16:33 GMT

One UX improvement I’d really like to see in Power BI Desktop is better visibility when loading large datasets from Power Query.

Currently, when Power Query finishes processing and the data starts loading into the model, the experience can feel like a black box. We often have no clear indication of:

How much data has been loaded
• How many rows have been processed
• What percentage of the load is complete
• How much time is remaining
• Which table is currently being loaded

For small datasets, this may not matter much. But when working with large datasets, a long-running refresh with limited progress information makes it difficult to know whether the process is actively working or stuck.

A simple progress indicator such as:

Customers → 85% loaded
Sales → 12.5M / 20M rows
Overall Progress → 72%
Estimated Time Remaining → 4 min

would make the experience significantly better.

Microsoft Fabric and Power BI are becoming increasingly focused on enterprise-scale data. Shouldn't the Desktop experience provide better transparency during large data loads as well?

Would love to hear the community's thoughts. Is this something you have faced too?

Improve support for calculated tables on remote semantic models

alaeddinegaaya — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:47:54 GMT

When a report is connected to a remote semantic model, Power BI Desktop allows users to create calculated tables and calculated columns based on that remote model.

The issue is that this architecture appears to work correctly in Desktop but may generate refresh failures after publication to Power BI Service.

This behavior is confusing because the limitation is only discovered after deployment.

Suggested improvements:

Fully support refresh of calculated tables and columns referencing remote semantic models.
Or block this scenario directly in Power BI Desktop.
Or provide a clear validation message before publication explaining the risk and offering remediation guidance.

This limitation creates unnecessary complexity and maintenance effort.

Allow Bottom-Up Hierarchy Expansion in Power BI Matrix for Financial Statements

Barbarini — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 06:16:58 GMT

Allow Bottom-Up Hierarchy Expansion in Power BI Matrix for Financial Statements

Hi, I would like to request an enhancement to the Power BI Matrix visual that allows hierarchies to be expanded from the lowest level upwards, rather than only following the traditional top-down navigation logic.

This functionality would be extremely valuable for building financial statements and Profit & Loss reports.

Current limitation

When creating a financial statement hierarchy in a Power BI Matrix, the structure typically contains multiple aggregation levels, such as Revenue, Revenue Categories, Account Groups and individual Accounts.

In many financial reporting scenarios, users need to start from detailed accounts or the lowest-level items and understand how these values aggregate into higher-level totals.

Currently, hierarchy navigation in the Matrix is primarily designed around a top-down expansion approach.

Requested feature

Please add the ability to expand a hierarchy bottom-up, starting from detailed or leaf-level accounts and navigating towards their parent and higher aggregation levels.

Ideally, users should be able to choose the hierarchy navigation direction directly in the Matrix settings, with options such as Top-down expansion or Bottom-up expansion.

Business use case

This functionality would significantly improve the creation of Profit & Loss statements, Balance Sheets, Cash Flow statements, Chart of Accounts reporting and Management financial reporting.

Financial hierarchies are different from typical product or geographical hierarchies. Users often need to analyze individual accounts first and then understand how they contribute to higher-level subtotals.

For example:

Account → Account Group → Financial Category → EBITDA → EBIT → Net Income

A bottom-up hierarchy navigation experience would make Power BI Matrix much more flexible and suitable for professional financial reporting.

Benefits

This enhancement would improve native financial reporting capabilities in Power BI, reduce the need for complex DAX workarounds and custom visuals, and make the Matrix visual more suitable for enterprise financial reporting.

Please consider adding bottom-up hierarchy expansion as a native capability of the Power BI Matrix visual.

Support OneLake Security-Enforced Data Sources in Fabric IQ Ontology

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:26:50 GMT

Fabric IQ Ontology is designed to provide governed business context across enterprise data, while OneLake Security is becoming the central fine-grained security model for Fabric.

These capabilities should work together directly.

I would like Ontology data bindings to fully support Lakehouses that use OneLake Security, including table/folder permissions, row-level security and column-level security.

Ontology queries, Graph exploration, Data Agents and other consumers should respect the effective OneLake permissions of the requesting identity.

Administrators should not have to choose between securing a Lakehouse with OneLake Security and using that data as part of a Fabric IQ ontology.

Integrating the two would provide a consistent security boundary from OneLake data through business concepts, relationships and AI experiences.

Allow External OneLake Data Shares to Be Accepted into Multiple Fabric Item Types

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:25:19 GMT

Fabric External Data Sharing provides an excellent zero-copy mechanism for sharing OneLake data across tenants.

However, the receiving tenant currently has to accept the share into a Lakehouse.

I would like the consumer to be able to choose the Fabric item that best matches the consuming workload, including Lakehouse, Warehouse, Eventhouse/KQL Database and SQL Database where technically applicable.

For example, a team whose primary consumption environment is Fabric Warehouse should not need to create and operate an additional Lakehouse simply to receive an external share.

The external share should remain governed and read-only while appearing natively in the selected Fabric workload.

This would make cross-tenant OneLake sharing more consistent with Fabric's multi-workload architecture and reduce unnecessary intermediate items.

Allow OneLake Shortcut Authentication Mode to Be Changed In Place

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:24:18 GMT

OneLake shortcuts support passthrough and delegated authentication, but changing the authentication model currently requires deleting and recreating the shortcut.

I would like shortcut authentication and connection settings to be editable in place.

Administrators should be able to change a shortcut from passthrough to delegated authentication, replace the delegated connection identity, or move back to passthrough without deleting the shortcut.

Fabric should validate the new identity and permissions before applying the change and preserve the shortcut object, downstream references, lineage and dependent workloads.

For enterprise environments, security models and service identities evolve over time. Recreating shortcuts increases operational risk and makes automation more difficult.

Making authentication a manageable property of the shortcut would improve lifecycle management, security operations and CI/CD.

Add an "Explain Effective Access" Experience for OneLake Security

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:22:51 GMT

As OneLake Security expands across tables, folders, rows, columns and shortcuts, determining why a specific user can or cannot access data can become difficult.

I would like Microsoft Fabric to provide an "Explain Effective Access" experience for OneLake.

An administrator should be able to select a user, service principal or group and a OneLake path and see:

- workspace and item permissions

- applicable OneLake security roles

- RLS and CLS policies

- shortcut-path permissions

- target-path permissions

- whether passthrough or delegated authentication is being used

- which identity each query engine uses

- the resulting effective access

- the specific rule responsible for allowing or blocking access

The same information should be available through an API for security automation and audit tooling.

This would significantly simplify troubleshooting, security reviews and least-privilege validation in enterprise Fabric environments.

Tenant-Wide OneLake Shortcut Lineage and Impact Analysis

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:18:41 GMT

This is grounded in a documented limitation: shortcut lineage is currently workspace-scoped, and Microsoft specifically says lineage for shortcuts to warehouses and semantic models isn't currently available. There are also community discussions describing the inability to trace table-level dependencies across workspaces.

Add an End-to-End Production Reference Architecture for Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:12:29 GMT

I would like to see a complete end-to-end Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence reference architecture that demonstrates how the individual RTI capabilities work together in a production-oriented solution.

A manufacturing or operational telemetry scenario could show the complete flow from Eventstream through Eventhouse and KQL, Real-Time Dashboards, Activator, Power BI, Fabric Data Agents, and other applicable Microsoft Fabric capabilities.

The guidance should explain architectural responsibilities, latency and retention choices, schema evolution, replay, security, governance, monitoring, CI/CD, environment promotion, connection management, and troubleshooting.

It would also be valuable to explain when deterministic KQL queries, rules, or Activator actions should be used before introducing AI or agent-based processing.

This would help architects, developers, students, and community learners understand how to move from individual Fabric RTI features to a governed and production-ready real-time solution.

Improve CI/CD consistency for Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence Eventstreams

Mourak — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:11:33 GMT

Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence has made strong progress with Git integration and deployment pipelines, but lifecycle management can still be inconsistent across Eventstream sources, destinations, connections, and deployment scenarios.

I would like to see more consistent CI/CD support across Real-Time Intelligence artifacts, including automated environment-specific connection rebinding, easier promotion from development to test and production, deployment validation before activation, and clearer diagnostics when an RTI artifact cannot be promoted successfully.

For enterprise implementations, it would also be valuable to reduce the amount of manual reconfiguration required after deployment.

Improving these capabilities would make Real-Time Intelligence solutions easier to operationalize, govern, automate, and teach as production-ready architectures rather than solutions that require manual configuration between environments.

The Power BI app is having issues on Android

minhtai — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 03:14:50 GMT

Issue Report – Power BI Android App

The Power BI app on Android has been experiencing an issue since yesterday morning and is still not working properly today.

- Platform: Android

- App: Microsoft Power BI

- Issue: Reports cannot be loaded/accessed in the Power BI app.

- Duration: From yesterday morning until today.

- Additional information: The same Power BI reports work normally when accessed via Samsung Internet on the same device.

Please help investigate and resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Collections in PowerBI

jschlereth2 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:42:28 GMT

Allow all users to create "collections" in Power BI...folders where they can organize dashboards they have access to in order to provide more personal clarity where things are located at.

One of the biggest challenges we have is users remembering what specific workspace dashboards are saved in. This would be mitigated if Power BI made it so users can create their own folders to organize dashboards according to their own mental model rather than trying to adopt/remember the mental model provided by the central team. This is akin to knowing someone else's folder structure rather than one's own folder structure.

This would not be intended to change access at all, just would be an organizational structure for the individual.

Display Delta table and column descriptions in Fabric Lakehouse Explorer/ Fabric on Browser

Darsh_ — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:20:03 GMT

Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse should provide a visible and editable description field for Delta tables and columns in Lakehouse Explorer.

Delta table metadata, such as comments or custom description properties, can be stored through Spark, but this information is not clearly displayed to users browsing the Lakehouse.

Please add support for:

Displaying table descriptions in Lakehouse Explorer/ Fabric on Browser
Displaying descriptions as tooltips or in a table details panel
Displaying column descriptions in table previews and schema views
Editing table and column descriptions directly from the Fabric interface
Reading existing Delta comments and description properties
Exposing descriptions consistently through the Lakehouse SQL analytics endpoint
Making descriptions available to Microsoft Purview and Copilot

This would improve data discovery, self-service analytics, governance, and semantic understanding without requiring users to maintain separate documentation.

Data engineers can identify tables from technical names, but report developers, analysts, and business users need descriptions to understand their intended purpose. Keeping descriptions directly with the Lakehouse object reduces separate documentation, ambiguity, and incorrect table usage.

Support Cross-Tenant (B2B/MTO Member) Authentication for Fabric Data Warehouse in Power BI Desktop

v-nandagm — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:54:44 GMT

Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse SQL Endpoints currently do not support cross-tenant authentication scenarios when accessed from Power BI Desktop. While B2B/Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO) member users can successfully access Fabric artifacts through the Fabric Service portal after switching to the target tenant, the same users are unable to authenticate when connecting to the Warehouse SQL Endpoint from Power BI Desktop using the Azure SQL Database connector.

Kindly support Cross-Tenant (B2B/MTO Member) Authentication for Fabric Data Warehouse SQL Endpoint in Power BI Desktop

Hide tabs in embedded Paginated report.

VineetPai — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 05:33:37 GMT

Whenever a paginated report is embedded into an application it displays two tabs by default. One tab consists of options File,Home,View and another tab consists of Export options.

Currently there exists no option to hide these tabs neither from the code end nor from the PowerBi report builder. Hence the ask would be to hide these tabs in a configurable way.

Power BI Report Builder - Difficult to Use and Ugly.

rs_rae — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:45:28 GMT

So I've definitely been spoiled in the modern age. So many apps that are integrated well with top-notch UI, and intuitive processes. Power BI Report Builder is surprisingly lacking in this. While I am grateful for the monthly updates to Power BI, the Report Builder is not easy to use at all.

I feel like there should be a much more intuitive integration between the two - i.e., be able to take a page from a Power BI Report, and "export" it to Power BI Report Builder, with all the filters, visuals, and settings etc in there. Realistically, as the user, I think it makes sense for it to all be in one program. I was actually really surprised to find out that it was a separate program that I was supposed to use for making pdfs etc.

My current workaround is building the model in Power BI, publishing it, and then using Get Data > from Power BI in Excel to get the data. And then building it in Excel... because Power BI Report Builder feels so unintuitive. And yes, we will always need paginated reports... right now I guess we are stuck with the many tabs in Excel.

I might try to use Power BI Report Builder again, but it feels like I'm stepping into the 2000s with its appearance and feel. And the fact that I have to recreate everything is so odd, it really is surprising that you can't easily add this sort of thing to Power BI itself, even just adding page breaks and better exporting to PDF to PBI would help so much with our actual business use cases. Everyone just asks for PDF versions of the dashboards anyways.

Individual L/R column borders for Matrix

AaronReasoner — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:06:38 GMT

Add Power BI feature for applying left and/or right borders to individual matrix columns, with customizable border thickness and color. This would let users visually group related measures, highlight key sections, and create cleaner, executive-friendly report layouts.

Consistent Locale Handling Across Power BI, Fabric, PowerPoint, and Subscriptions

Le_M — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:03:16 GMT

Microsoft Fabric and Power BI should provide consistent locale handling across all user experiences. Today, locales such as German (Switzerland) are correctly respected in Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service, but not in PowerPoint live embedding and subscription emails, where number and date formats can differ.

This issue likely affects other languages and regional settings as well. Locale preferences should be applied consistently across all integrations and output channels to ensure a seamless user experience.

Consistent locale handling is imperative for usability, trust, and adoption in international organisations. Users must be able to rely on the same number and date formats regardless of where Power BI content is consumed. Microsoft's localisation strategy should be implemented end-to-end across the entire platform.

Power BI Admin & Governance Center – Centralized Activity and Usage Analytics

Dr7awb — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:45:31 GMT

Subject: Feature Proposal: Advanced Power BI Admin & Governance Center – Centralized Activity, Access, Sharing, Licensing and Usage Analytics

Dear Microsoft Power BI Team,

I would like to propose a comprehensive enhancement to the Power BI administration experience: an Advanced Power BI Admin & Governance Center that provides administrators with a centralized view of users, workspaces, reports, pages, sharing, permissions, licensing, dependencies, and activity.

Today, administrators often need to navigate multiple areas of the Power BI Service, workspaces, sharing settings, APIs, audit logs, and Microsoft administration portals to answer basic governance questions. A centralized governance experience would significantly improve visibility, security, auditing, and operational efficiency.

1. Complete User Activity

Provide administrators with detailed visibility into who accessed what, when, and how frequently.

Workspace activity

User who accessed the workspace
Date and time
Activity type
Last access
Access frequency

Report activity

User who opened the report
Date and time
Number of views
Last viewed
Access method

Report page activity

Specific page viewed
User who viewed it
Date and time
Number of views
Last viewed

For example:

User: Ahmed Workspace: Clinical Analytics Report: OP Performance Page: Surgery Performance Opened: 27 Aug 2026 – 08:42 AM

This should allow administrators to answer:

Who opened what, when, and how frequently?

2. Centralized Sharing & Access Intelligence

Provide one centralized view of all sharing and access relationships.

For each workspace, report, and relevant artifact, administrators should be able to see:

Who has access
How access was granted
Direct user access
Security group access
Shared link access
Workspace membership
App access
Viewer / Contributor / Member / Admin role
Date access was granted
Last access
Whether the access is actively being used

For example:

Report: Executive Dashboard Shared By: Ahmed Shared On: 27 Aug 2026 – 09:15 AM Shared With: Group COO Access Type: Specific people Permission: View

For broader sharing:

Access Type: Anyone in organization Risk: High

Power BI could also provide governance alerts for potentially excessive or risky access.

3. “Who Has Access To What?” — Central Access Matrix

Provide an administrator-wide access matrix instead of requiring administrators to inspect each workspace and report individually.

User	Workspace	Report	Page	Access Method	Role
User A	Finance	Revenue	Overview	Workspace	Viewer
User A	Clinical	OP Dashboard	Surgery	Direct	Viewer
User B	Finance	Revenue	—	Security Group	Member
User C	Executive	CEO Dashboard	KPI	Shared Link	Viewer

The matrix should support filtering by:

User
Workspace
Report
Semantic model
Security group
Access type
Role
Last accessed date

This would make access reviews, permission audits, and compliance investigations substantially easier.

4. License & User Status

Provide a centralized view of the licensing state and actual Power BI utilization of every user.

Include:

Power BI Pro
Power BI Premium Per User
Fabric license
Free license
Trial status
Trial expiration date
License assignment date
Last Power BI activity
License utilization
Potential license reclaim candidates

For example:

Ahmed Power BI Pro Active Last Activity: Today User B Power BI Pro Inactive for 120 days Potential license reclaim User C Free Fabric Trial Trial expires: 14 Sep 2026

Power BI could also provide actionable alerts such as:

12 users have Pro licenses but have not used Power BI in 90 days.

This would allow organizations to optimize license allocation based on actual usage rather than assignment alone.

5. Semantic Model Dependency View

Because multiple reports can depend on the same semantic model, administrators should have a centralized dependency view.

For example:

Semantic Model

│

├── Report A

│

├── Page 1

│

└── Page 2 │

├── Report B

│

├── Page 1

│

└── Page 2

│

└── Report C

└── Page 1

Administrators should be able to immediately determine:

Which reports use a semantic model
Which workspaces contain those reports
Who has access
Who actually uses them
Refresh status
Last successful refresh
Report usage
Page-level usage where available

This would be particularly valuable when assessing the impact of changes to a shared semantic model.

6. Power BI Administrator vs. Tenant-Level Visibility

Power BI administrators should have the necessary Power BI governance visibility without automatically requiring unrelated Microsoft 365 or Azure administrative privileges.

In other words:

Being a Power BI Administrator should provide the necessary permissions to perform Power BI governance without requiring broader Microsoft 365 administrative privileges.

Where additional permissions are genuinely required, Power BI should explicitly identify the missing permission.

For example:

Additional Permission Required: Microsoft Entra Global Administrator

Rather than simply hiding the information or returning an ambiguous access-denied result.

This would make the administration model significantly more transparent.

7. Centralized Power BI Governance Dashboard

The Admin Center could provide a single governance dashboard containing:

Users

Total users
Active users
Inactive users
Licensed users
Trial users

Workspaces

Total workspaces
Active/inactive workspaces
Workspace owners
Members
Orphaned workspaces

Reports

Total reports
Most viewed reports
Never-viewed reports
Last viewed
Reports with no recent activity

Access

Users with broad access
Shared links
External sharing
Direct permissions
Security-group permissions

Licensing

Pro utilization
Trial users
Unused licenses
Expiring trials

Activity

Most active users
Most accessed workspaces
Most viewed reports
Most viewed pages

8. Governance Search

A particularly useful capability would be a global governance search.

An administrator could search for:

Ahmed

and immediately see:

Ahmed

│

├── Licenses

│

└── Power BI Pro — Active

│

├── Workspaces

│

├── Clinical Analytics — Member

│

└── Executive Analytics — Viewer

│

├── Reports

│

├── OP Performance

│

└── Executive Dashboard

│

├── Recent Activity

│

└── Last activity: 27 Aug 2026

│

└── Shared Access

└── Executive Dashboard → Group COO

Likewise, an administrator could search for a report, workspace, semantic model, or security group and immediately understand its complete governance footprint.

Core Principle

The administrator should be able to answer the following questions from one place:

Who has access to what?
Who actually uses it?
Who opened it and when?
Which report and page did they open?
Who shared it?
When was it shared?
Who received the access?
Which workspaces and reports use this semantic model?
Does the user have a license or trial?
Is that license actually being used?
What Power BI permissions are required to see or manage this information?

The goal is not simply to provide better activity logs. It is to establish a centralized governance layer for Power BI that combines activity, access, sharing, licensing, dependencies, and usage analytics into a single administrative experience.

This would be particularly valuable for enterprise organizations that need to perform regular access reviews, license optimization, compliance audits, security investigations, and impact analysis across large Power BI environments.

Suggested Power BI Idea Title:

Advanced Power BI Admin & Governance Center – Centralized Activity, Access, Sharing, Licensing and Usage Analytics

Best regards,
Ahmed Albukhaytan