Explore is a lightweight, focused experience that lets users quickly adjust visuals—filter, sort, add data, change visual types—and dig into underlying data, all without the complexity of full report building.
We’ve recently shipped exciting updates to:
- Introduce more intuitive entry points.
- Expand access so more business users can explore their data.
- Add new functionality to make Explore even more powerful.
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New entry points
We’ve added the option to explore your data from visuals generated by Copilot and from visuals in your reports. Keep in mind, explore does have certain limitations, some user might not see this option if requirements aren’t met.1.) Launch Explore from visuals generated by Copilot
Have you ever gotten a visual back from Copilot that needs a few tweaks to get to the insight you’re looking for? No need to add it to the report page, now you can launch explore from the visual using the Explore this visual button! This feature exists in the standalone Copilot and in both read and edit modes of the Copilot pane for reports.
2.) Launch Explore from visuals in your reports
If you see a visual in a report that you’d like to dig deeper into or tweak, it’s now as easy as selecting Explore this data option in the More options menu. This is a great way to make small adjustments to a visual, such as changing the visual type to better suit an upcoming presentation.
Expanded access to Explore
Explore is now available to users with view permission by default.
We’re excited to announce that all users with view permissions on supported Fabric artifacts can now use Explore by default. (Note: Lakehouses still require Build permission.)This change is designed to empower business users—especially those without editing access—to gain quick insights and perform ad hoc analysis without needing to learn report creation. Since most of these users have view permissions, this update brings the power of Explore to many more people.
Rest assured, your data remains secure—both Object-Level Security (OLS) and Row-Level Security (RLS) still apply.
Prefer more limited access? Admins and creators can opt out!
We understand this level of access may not suit every organization or scenario. If needed, admins can disable Explore for Viewers by turning off the Users with view permission can launch Explore setting in the Admin Portal. This restricts access to users with Build permissions only.
Semantic model owners can also limit exploration of their models to people with Build permissions on an artifact-by-artifact basis. They can do this by disabling the Users with view permission can launch Explore setting in the Explore settings section of semantic model settings.
Coming soon - Save to nonpremium workspaces
Previously, Explorations could only be saved to Premium workspaces. Soon, we’ll remove that limitation and allow explorations to be saved to nonpremium workspaces as well, following the same licensing model as Power BI reports.Expanding explore functionality with visual calculations
We recently added the ability to create visual calculations in your exploration, which opens up even more possibilities for ad hoc analysis! A calculation can refer to any data in the visual including columns, measures, or other visual calculations (some examples include running sum, moving average, percent of grand total, and more). Create a visual calculation from either the matrix or the visual by selecting New visual calculation.
This opens the visual calculations edit mode, which lets you create quick common calculations with ease using the many available tools like highlights, templates and parameter pickers.
Try adding a visual calculation to your exploration to see how it works!
Want to learn more about all the ways you can use Explore for ad hoc data deep dives? Check out the Explore documentation here!