Export to PowerPoint (Preview) feedback

[tzvikei]

This thread was created to gather feedback and communicate over the new Export to PowerPoint (Preview) feature in PowerBI.com.

Ask questions, suggest features, or leave general feedback. We will monitor closely.

Thanks,

Tzvi Keisar

Program Manager, Power BI

[SonjaN]

Really happy with this feature! KPI visualizations do not seem to work yet. 

[pmdci]

I tried it but the report was badly rendered. I got text in a text box repeated (the textbox appeared twice).

Now forgive me for my bluntness, but I have to take something out of my chest: I always expected the export to Power Point to have a degree of interaction (like SAP's Crystal Xcelcius does). Again, sorry for the bluntness but I see no value in this functionality as it currently stands. Nothing much to see or test in it.

Yo might wonder why am I being so negative about a functionality that has just been released in preview? Well... Here is what I think that will happen (based on my previous experience with feedbacks for Power BI): Even though interaction was a pivotal point of this feature request, it will not be delivered. The feature request will be marked as complete, though. And we will have to re-submit the feature request all over again... 😞 😞 😞

Please prove me wrong!

[tzvikei]

Hi @pmdci,

It is unfortunate that the feature is not useful for you as it is. 

From the user research that we have done prior to developing this feature, interactivity was not a top ask (to our surprise), and you can see evidence of that by looking at the responses in this thread (and the original feature request). We did not communicate at any point that interactivity will be part of the feature. sorry if you thought otherwise.

Of course I'm not implying that interactivty is not important. on the contrary, it is a very important capability of Power BI reports, even in PowerPoint, but given the heavy investments it requires in the service, we can't put it on the roadmap just yet.

Regarding the text box issues you encountered, my guess is that it is because you have a background image or a background shape behind the text. If you remove the backgrounds, the text should be fine. We are aware of this issue and working to fix it in future releases.

Thanks,

Tzvi

[pmdci]

Hi @tzvikei

Thank you for the response.

About the textbox, I have a background colour -- not image. But I am glad you are aware of this issue.

Thanks as well for sharing your views on the interactivity. I have to say I am as surprised as you are, because as far as I rememeber there were all sorts of comments about interactivity in the uservoice submission. If interactivity is not important, then I can simply put the report in full screen, press "Print Screen" then paste it on a PowerPoint slide. Or use the snippit tool or Snaggit for something more sophisticated.

From what I see in the feedback of this post, Filtering is quite important. Isn't that interactivity? Also I am sure that all of those who voted in that uservoice request might not be as active in participating in this forum -- let alone be aware that this post requesting feedback exist 

Thanks again!

P.

PS: I just saw Patrick's comments above and clearly I am not the only one here speaking my mind  . I know that he seemed more passionate on his criticism, but I understand his frustration. In particular Microsoft keeps us in the dark concerning the development of the product. Clearly those of us who signed an NDA with Microsoft require access to a roadmap. We cannot be selling Power BI based on non-substantial promises!

[dcresp]

I am very surprised that interactivity did not rate. What we need is reports that can be customised in PPT and then have the data updated or filtered straight into the report based on an updated PBI file. Static reports deliver limited functionality for us and I was expecting a lot more.

[tzvikei]

@pmdci,

Try removing the background colour in the textbox as a temporary solution.

The value of using the images that are produced when exporting to PPT, is that the images are high-resolution and look sharp when stretched to fit entire slides. This is something that is hard to when doing screen capture, unless you are prepared to stitch images or you have a 4K monitor.

Filtering is considered in-session interactivity, and will be supported at some point, but will still be captured as an image. I thought your request was for the report to be interactive inside PowerPoint (so you can interact with the charts while in PowerPoint).

I am hoping to get as much feedback as possible, that is why I added a link to this post both in the blog post, and the user voice ticket. Hopefully we will see many requests for interactivity and put it on the roadmap. As I said, I agree with you that this is an important feature, it's just a bit different than what we currently targeted at the moment - which is to put great looking snapshots of your reports and in a PPT deck for presentations.

Thanks for your feedback,

Tzvi

[pmdci]

Yom tov @tzvikei,

Well if the interaction would still work with static data then this is the first time I am hearing about it. I think this goes back to the communication between the team and the community -- at least with those of us that have an NDA with Microsoft.

I am glad you see the importance of the interaction. In particular what I would like to see if a similar what-if analysis that exists in Crystal Xcelcius being used in Power BI. That was a killer feature that brought presentations to life.

I get what you said about 4K resolution but to me tha is champagne problems. I am biased because I know how to get around this 

[tzvikei]

@rishab1992, @ThomasTurbado, @dcresp, @Baha, @Anonymous, @Anonymous, @vrossouw:

Thanks for your feedback!

• On the roadmap: custom visuals, filters, support more than 15 pages
• interactive reports, refreshable content directly from PPT are not on the roadmap for now
• As for the cover page, it can be easily replaced by your own slide (remember, this is PowerPoint )

[norahfox]

This looks pretty great! I'm definitely excited to be able to use this for board presentations rather than screencapping page after page of reports. 

I know not everyone will agree with this, but I really like the fact that it doesn't connect to live data - we often go back and look at slides from previous months, and a live connection would make that very difficult. I love being able to re-size individual elements and have it look great.

A few things:

• On the title page, the box that says "Last data refresh" is very misleading - that's the last time I uploaded a new version of the data model, not the last time the data was refreshed (from daily auto refreshes). 
• Also on the title page, the box that says "Downloaded at" doesn't appear to be adjusted for local time. I tested one this morning and it says it was downloaded today at 2:27 PM, but it was actually 9:27 AM.
• It's a bummer that I can't change slicer selections and then re-export to Power Point. I've designed a fair number of reports so that they can be screencapped, slicer selections adjusted, and then screencapped again. It saves us from having a ton of nearly identical pages in the PBI report. Hopefully that will work eventually.
• A large number of my tables are getting re-sized and cut off, which means I can't use them in final presentations.
• The borders on a few objects are either missing or are thinner than the other borders, which can make it look like I was trying to make the object look 3D (yuck!).

[tzvikei]

Hi @norahfox,

Thank you for taking the time to write your feedback, it is very helpful for us to improve the service.

To your specific points:

• Looks like a potential bug, we are looking into it
• This is a known issue. we don't have a way to know what is your local time, so we use GMT
• capturing in-session interactions (slicer state among them) is on the roadmap. meanwhile, it might be efffective for you to save a copy of the report with the current slicer state and then export this report to PPT (hopefully the number of variations is not too big)
• can you share the screenshots of those damaged tables and borders? you can send to xlpbifdbk@microsoft.com

Thanks,

Tzvi

[Anonymous]

Great start - wish it could handle more than just 15 tabs for this static feature. But looking forward when you can embed a dashboard or report tab directly into powerpoint with functionality as well.

[Anonymous]

PPT export is great, hi-res and available for distribution offline.

However, it would be even more useful if we were able to automate the exports and also be able to apply different filter values for different exports.

Will PPT export and possibility to apply filters to exports be available in any API?

[Baha]

Powerful tool, however I find a few limitations:

I) You cannot customise the default PPT template (that should be simple to fix)
ii) It does not support custom visuals
iii) It does not support live content

Are these to be considered in a future release of this tool?

[dcresp]

This is a good start. However, what we really need is a way to update the visuals in Power Point when data updates in Power BI. Hopefully that is on the road map.

[ThomasTurbado]

Nice job Power BI!

Next step: Do interactive, conect to data, posibility to change cover....

Keep moving Power BI

ThomasTurbado 

[aineslider]

It is prety good but we will need additional configuration to design the first page layout, title, image....

[rishab1992]

Great work by enabling the export to PPT. However, we are looking forward for enabling the export of the custom visuals without which this feature would not be of much use to us.

[tzvikei]

Thanks for the feedback!

We will investigate the errors that were posted here.

@ahan2, @tringuyenminh92, @AM : supporting custom visuals is one of our top priorities. we are working on it.

@Seth_C_Bauer: we are working to fix the annoying background image issue.

@Marina: if you can share more details about the issues you are experiencing, we can investigate (which elements were missing, what is the nature of the misalignments, etc.)

@Greg_Deckler: Thanks for the kind words! I'm truly excited to see when our users can make real use of our work 🙂 we will take a look at the issues in the report.

@Bartosz: supporting in-session filters and slicers are on our roadmap, but unfortunatley I don't have a timeline for them yet.

Best Regards,

Tzvi

[swoolley]

Looking good, although majority of my reports came back with the error below (or a similar one):

We couldn't export your report to a PowerPoint file
Please try again later or contact support. If you contact support, please provide these details.

Activity ID61f747d9-1b5e-42ce-8c1e-2e092d547696

Request IDf401d14f-620b-0348-f49d-5f6f3dcdd924

Correlation IDdc48a13e-e53a-6e1e-01d9-707df311fca5

Status code500

TimeTue Oct 18 2016 09:43:10 GMT+0100 (GMT Standard Time)

Version13.0.1700.374

Cluster URIhttps://wabi-north-europe-redirect.analysis.windows.net

Is this maybe due to the size of the data sets it is reporting on?

[swoolley]

Looking good, although majority of my reports came back with the error below (or a similar one):

We couldn't export your report to a PowerPoint file
Please try again later or contact support. If you contact support, please provide these details.

Activity ID61f747d9-1b5e-42ce-8c1e-2e092d547696

Request IDf401d14f-620b-0348-f49d-5f6f3dcdd924

Correlation IDdc48a13e-e53a-6e1e-01d9-707df311fca5

Status code500

TimeTue Oct 18 2016 09:43:10 GMT+0100 (GMT Standard Time)

Version13.0.1700.374

Cluster URIhttps://wabi-north-europe-redirect.analysis.windows.net

Is this maybe due to the size of the data sets it is reporting on?

[pikesm]

This is great - this saves me a screenshot - copy - paste into Word then print to PDF process. PowerPoint output makes it really flexible for presentations etc.

I have an issue with the way it treats text boxes. These seem to be printed twice with slightly different treatment of word wrap in each.

Thanks

Steve Pike

Head of Information and Technology

[jcarville]

It seems that if you click on the error for custom visuals and delete it then your visual should be hidden underneath this.