Power BI November 2025 Feature Summary
The November 2025 Power BI feature update brings several important announcements and enhancements across the platform. Key highlights include the deprecation of R and Python visuals in the Embed for your customers solution, significant updates to Copilot and AI capabilities—such as the standalone Copilot in Power BI mobile apps (Preview) and improvements to Verified Answers—and new options for reporting, modeling, and data connectivity. Users will also notice advancements in visualizations, with features like automatically expanding matrix columns and a generally available Card visual, as well as expanded support for Spark and Impala connectors and enhancements to image visuals and the OneLake Catalog. This summary provides an overview of these impactful changes to help you leverage the latest innovations in Power BI. Contents Events and Announcements Fabric Data Days is on now! FabCon is back from March 16-20, 2026, in Atlanta, GA Copilot and AI Ask anything, anywhere with Standalone Copilot in Power BI mobile apps (Preview) Updates to the standalone Copilot in Power BI Improvements to Verified Answers Remote Power BI Model Context Protocol Server for chat with your Data (Preview) Reporting Automatically expand matrix columns to fill available space Card visual (Generally Available) Enhancing Image visuals with styling, states, and more OneLake Catalog now supports user data functions for Translytical task flows (Preview) App Copilot (Preview) Modeling Power BI Modeling MCP Server (Preview) Semantic Model Version History (Generally Available) TMDL Visual Studio Code Extension (Generally Available) Data connectivity Spark and Impala Connectors (Generally Available) Visualizations Activity Gauge by Powerviz Decomposition Tree – All Expanding Dynamic chart legends in Zebra BI Charts Drill Down Bubble PRO by ZoomCharts Power BI Theme Generator Power Gantt Chart by Nova Silva Turn any image into data insights with Synoptic Panel by OKVIZ Announcing deprecation of R and Python visuals in Embed for your customers solution https://youtu.be/pRFeQWzUhn0 Events and Announcements Fabric Data Days is on now! Take your Power BI skills to the next level with live learning sessions, QuickViz challenges, discount vouchers for exam PL-300 and DP-600, and community connection. See what’s happening this week. FabCon is back from March 16-20, 2026, in Atlanta, GA Join us for the ultimate Power BI, Microsoft Fabric SQL, Real-Time Intelligence, AI, and Databases community-led event. The third annual FabCon Americas will feature sessions from your favorite Microsoft and community speakers, keynotes, more opportunities to Ask the Experts for 1:1 support, an engaging community lounge with opportunities to network and connect with your peers, a dedicated partner pre-day, a packed expo hall, Power Hour, Data Viz World Championship, and a can’t-miss attendee party at the Georgia Aquarium. Register with code FABCOMM to save $200. Copilot and AI Ask anything, anywhere with Standalone Copilot in Power BI mobile apps (Preview) In the coming app release, we are enabling a new standalone Copilot experience straight from your mobile homepage. A complete chat experience that allows you to ask any question about your data and get instance insights from Copilot, anytime, anywhere. This experience will be available in the app stores in the upcoming weeks. To start chatting with your data, use the new Copilot button on your home page. This will open a chat experience where you can type or dictate (IOS only) your question and Copilot will take it from there. When you ask about a metric or a KPI, most chances that Copilot will generate a visual for you in addition to answering your question with text. Tap on the visual to open a pane and interact with the generated visual. Tap on the citation or reference to learn what content Copilot used for grounding its answer. You can also open the report from there as well. If you want to share insight discovered in the chat with others, select the ‘Share’ button from the visual pane, or the copy from the chat. The iOS apps (iPhone and iPad) also support dictation – so you can use voice interaction to ask Copilot questions. Use the mic icon in the chat box and Copilot will start listening, waiting for your questions. With this new standalone Copilot experience, you can now easily get quick answers and stay on top of things by chatting with your data directly from your mobile. Updates to the standalone Copilot in Power BI The standalone Copilot in Power BI, also known as ‘chat with your data’, is now even easier to use. Previously, Copilot asked users to choose from a list of possible data sources before answering questions. Now, it handles that step automatically: if it finds a strong match, it selects it in the background and goes straight to the answer. When more context is needed, Copilot will ask simple clarifying questions to find the right source. Although the additional reasoning may require a few more seconds, obtaining an accurate response from a reliable source justifies the brief wait. Additionally, in response to search questions like ‘Find reports about sales’, you’ll now see a much simpler text-based list of items. New entry points right from the home page By late November, you’ll be able to access Copilot right on your home page, making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for or ask ad hoc questions about your data! Simply type your question and hit enter. If you preferred the old home page, no problem. Switch back using the layout drop-down. New suggested prompts for recently opened items - Copilot now offers helpful prompt suggestions related to recently opened items to help users get started. Improved experience attaching items to your question - Want to add a report, or other items, to your question? Items are now sorted by recency and easily filtered by item type in a slick new design that aligns with other Copilot experiences across Microsoft. Experiment with all the new updates and let us know what you think! Improvements to the Report Copilot We’ve upgraded the Report Copilot experience in Power BI, making it easier than ever to create, edit, and refine beautiful, data-rich reports with the help of AI. With this update, Copilot in Power BI not only helps you create entire report pages in seconds but now also gives you more control, flexibility, and visual intelligence than ever before. The new Report Copilot experience is available now in the Power BI service and Power BI Desktop. Smarter, More Capable Visual Creation The new Copilot understands your data and intent more deeply than ever. Just tell it what you want to create, and watch your ideas come to life instantly. Better visual recommendations: Copilot now selects the most appropriate visuals for your data automatically. Expanded Visual Library: Copilot supports a wider range of visuals, giving you more options to present insights into exactly how you envision them. Improved context awareness: When you describe what you want to see, Copilot now understands more nuanced instructions, producing more accurate and insightful results. To learn more about creating and modifying reports with Copilot, refer to the Create reports in the Power BI service with Copilot documentation. Improvements to Verified Answers This update enhances how verified answers inherit the state of your visual, expands filtering flexibility, and delivers more reliable results. What’s New? Verified answers now inherit and reflect the entire visual state: Previously, verified answers only captured filter states active at the time of creation. With this update, they now inherit the entire visual state, including slicers. This change directly addresses one of the most common pieces of feedback we received. Report slicers impacting the visual are being inherited and shown in the verified answer. In addition to slicers, we will support additional visual states: Slicer selections Field parameter choices Cross filters and cross highlights Drill-through filters Expanded Filtering Capabilities for Authors: There is now more flexibility when configuring verified answers. The limit for predefined filter permutations has increased from 3 to 10, enabling more complex and nuanced configurations. From a consumption perspective, we see that most prompt requests naturally use between one and three filters. ‘Show total sales for the region 1 in Q1’. ‘What is the usage of Product 1 in Country 1 during Month 1’. ‘Show average satisfaction scores by City 1 and segment 1’. Still, some business questions require deeper combinations of filters, and this expanded limit ensures verified answers can handle even the most detailed reporting scenarios. Improved Filtering Reliability: What are more filters, if they aren’t applied consistently? We’ve made substantial improvements under the hood to how we match user prompts in Copilot to verified answers and the appropriate filters. Verified Answers now interpret and apply filters more accurately, reducing mismatches between what users ask and what’s displayed, and ensuring filters are included when they should be. New card visual support: We have enabled the highly requested new card visual that you can now set as verified answers, the new card visual and Azure maps will be supported in Verified Answers creation and consumption. Why it Matters: These updates make verified answers feel native to your Copilot consumption experiences, seamlessly adapting to slicers, filters, interactions, and drill-through actions that users have come to expect from their visuals. Consumers will get answers that truly reflect the context of their analysis. The result, faster, more accurate insights, and a smoother path from question to confidence, and better grounding for the rest of your Copilot experience to learn from. For more info on how these updates work, refer to the Prepare Your Data for AI - Verified Answers documentation. Remote Power BI Model Context Protocol Server for chat with your Data (Preview) Available soon, the remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Power BI provides agents and MCP clients with tools to enable you to chat with your data, remotely, all authenticated with Microsoft Entra ID. This means you’ll be able to create powerful, custom agents on top of data that lives in your semantic models. The server has three tools that give your agents the ability to reason over your data, and respond to a user’s prompts: Get Semantic Model Schema: This tool provides the agent with the structure of the semantic model. Generate Query: This tool uses Copilot in Power BI to generate a DAX query based on the user’s input and best practices. The agent can then iterate on this query if it chooses or simply proceeds with the provided query. Execute Query: This tool gives the agent a powerful mechanism to query the semantic model to respond to any question a user asks. These tools can be implemented by any application that hosts an MCP client, such as Visual Studio Code. Other, non-Microsoft MCP clients can be supported with Service Principal authentication, backed by Azure Entra ID. The remote MCP Server for Power BI enables you to easily build the next generation of agents on top of the data your organization has already invested so heavily in. For more information on the remote MCP server for Power BI, for more information, refer to the documentation. Reporting Automatically expand matrix columns to fill available space Last month, tables got the Grow to fit option expanding columns to fill the available space. This month, we are enabling the same option on the matrix visual. As a reminder: with the Grow to fit option, any extra space in the visual is evenly distributed across existing columns when the total column width is smaller than the visual container, which eliminates the need to do manual resizing to fill the gaps. If your matrix isn’t using the full visual width, you can manually resize columns or use the new ‘Grow to fit’ option. For example, this matrix doesn’t fully utilize the available space: Navigate to the format pane under Column headers > Options, toggle Auto-size width to ‘On’, and set ‘Resize behavior’ to ‘Grow to fit’. Instantly, your matrix expands to make full use of the available space. The additional available space will be distributed across the columns: In last month’s release we also had an overenthusiastic horizontal scrollbar when using this option. This has now been corrected. The horizontal scrollbar should not show unless there isn’t enough space to fit the content. Learn more about Grow to fit in the table and matrix documentation. Card visual (Generally Available) The new Card visual brings a modern and visually engaging way to highlight key metrics in your reports, now with full support for hero images and a consistent formatting control experience across visuals for an intuitive experience. Whether you’re highlighting a product, showcasing a team, or featuring a brand logo, the new hero image feature empowers you to create visually rich reports going far beyond simple data points. The Card visual also introduces a dynamic collage layout, letting you highlight one section while the other two share the remaining space. Try adding the new Card visual to your next report and experience the difference for yourself. For more details and step-by-step instructions, check out the official documentation at Create a (new) card visual in Power BI documentation. Enhancing Image visuals with styling, states, and more We’re excited to introduce enhancements to the Image visual, bringing it closer to the level of interactivity and design flexibility you’ve come to expect. Create more engaging experiences by customizing image visuals based on user interaction states such as default, hover, and pressed states of images. Alongside state customization, we’ve added formatting options to give you full control over the look and feel of your image visuals. Such as background, border, and shape. These enhancements make it easier than ever to integrate images seamlessly into your report layout. We’ve also expanded the sources, fit and effects section, with more options for image source, including upload, URL, or from a data field. You no longer need to delete the visual to update its image. With the latest update, you can easily change the image source or swap the image itself, making edits faster and more flexible. We hope these updates to the Image visual inspire you to get creative with your report designs. Whether adding a splash of branding, building intuitive navigation, or simply making your reports more engaging, the new features give you the flexibility to do it all. To learn more about the image visual, visit our documentation: Create an Image Visual in Power BI. OneLake Catalog now supports user data functions for Translytical task flows (Preview) The Fabric user data function selection experience for Translytical task flows has been improved. You can now use the OneLake catalog to discover and select the user data function that you want your action button to invoke. With the OneLake Catalog you can: Browse all available User data functions in one place. Search by keyword for quick access. View details like owner, location and sensitivity label Filter by My Functions or Endorsed in your org for confidence and governance. This new experience is available when selecting the function for Data function actions. Select a button, open the format pane, enable Action, and under Data function select the fx button. Learn more about Translytical task flows in Power BI and how Fabric user data functions can take your report beyond just showing data at Understand translytical task flows. App Copilot (Preview) Your app users now can chat with your curated data within the context of an app. An app-scoped Copilot means users can search for reports within an app, ask questions, and receive answers based on the reports in that app. App Copilot is a separate complement to report-scoped Copilot already available on each report viewed in an app. To learn more, refer to the Power BI app Copilot: AI scoped to the curated content in an app (Preview) blog post. Modeling Power BI Modeling MCP Server (Preview) The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that enables AI agents to securely connect with tools and services. The Power BI Modeling MCP Server brings Power BI semantic modeling capabilities to your AI agents through a local MCP server. This allows developers and AI applications to interact with Power BI models in entirely new ways, from using natural language to execute modeling changes to autonomous AI agentic development workflows. Capabilities Build and modify semantic models with natural language: Create or update tables, columns, measures, relationships and much more simply by describing what you need. Perform bulk modeling operations at scale: Rename, refactor, translate, or document hundreds of model objects in seconds. Apply modeling best practices: Easily evaluate and implement modeling best practices. Leverage agentic workflows: Work with Power BI Project files and TMDL code, enabling AI agents to autonomously plan and execute complex modeling tasks. Query and validate DAX expressions: Run DAX queries or validate measures directly through AI-driven workflows. Start by installing the Power BI Modeling MCP Server Visual Studio Code extension to enable Power BI semantic modeling capabilities in GitHub Copilot. Whether you’re using GitHub Copilot or another AI-powered assistant, the Power BI Modeling MCP Server unlocks a new era of intelligent, automated, and high-efficiency semantic model development. For additional information and to provide feedback, refer to Power BI Modeling MCP on GitHub. Semantic Model Version History (Generally Available) With version history, you can confidently make changes to your semantic models—whether you’re editing in the web or live editing Direct Lake semantic models in Desktop—knowing you can restore earlier versions and recover from critical mistakes. Versions are automatically captured in an Office-like history pane for your live edited semantic models, making it easy to select and restore any previous version. Power BI captures up to five versions for each semantic model that supports version history. Versions are saved automatically when you: Open a semantic model in Editing mode on the web or open a Direct Lake model for live editing in Desktop. Publish or upload a .pbix file. Restore a previous version. You can also manually save a version (with an optional description) from the File menu while editing on the web. Learn more about this capability including limitations in the Use semantic model version history (preview) documentation. TMDL Visual Studio Code Extension (Generally Available) This update brings DAX semantic highlighting support within TMDL documents alongside other enhanced authoring features like Power Query semantic highlighting, breadcrumb navigation, code actions, code formatting, localization, and numerous bug fixes. You can find more details about this latest release in the changelog. The TMDL extension is essential for anyone working with TMDL documents in Power BI Projects (PBIP). It brings modern code experiences to semantic modeling, enabling scalable development of semantic models with the efficiency, flexibility, and AI-powered workflows that today’s data teams expect. Get the TMDL Extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace to enhance your semantic modeling-as-code experience and accelerate your semantic model development today! Screenshot of VSCode Marketplace Feature Highlights DAX support: Improved readability of DAX code within TMDL documents including semantic highlighting, real-time diagnostics, and autocomplete. Power Query support: Autocomplete, diagnostics, syntax highlighting, hover and formatting. Localization: Hover descriptions and code action messages are now displayed in the user’s preferred language, aligning with Visual Studio Code language settings. Code actions: Quick fix and refactoring TMDL code such as duplicated lineage tag or misspelled property. Code navigation: Easily navigate TMDL document objects in a hierarchical view. Code format: Automatically organize TMDL code for enhanced readability and consistency. We value your input and encourage you to share it using vscode-tmdl GitHub repository. Data connectivity Spark and Impala Connectors (Generally Available) We’re thrilled to announce that Implementation 2.0 for the Spark and Impala Connectors is now generally available, powered by the open-source Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC) driver. This update delivers faster, more secure connectivity for Power BI Desktop, making it easier to analyze and visualize large datasets. How does this improve your Power BI experience? Performance boost: Reduced overhead with no serialization or copying. Security improvements: Memory safety and garbage collection aligned with SDL standards. Seamless integration: Works across Fabric experiences and Power BI Desktop for unified data access. Beginning November 2025, specify [Implementation="2.0"] in your connection settings to utilize these improvements: Spark: ApacheSpark.Tables("http://server.cloudapp.azure.com:10001/cliservice", 2, [BatchSize=null, HierarchicalNavigation=true, Implementation="2.0"]) Impala: Impala.Database("server.cloudapp.azure.com", [Implementation="2.0"]) For further details, please refer to the Spark Connector and Impala Connector documentation. Visualizations Activity Gauge by Powerviz The Activity Gauge is an advanced visual used to measure the progress against a set target or Goal for multiple categories. It is typically presented in the form of a radial bar chart/Gauge, displaying a range of values or percentages. This visual is commonly used for project management, performance tracking, and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Key Features: Gauge Customization: Shape, style, and add icons for a unique design. Targets: Choose from options or use a custom field to set a target. Data Colors: Offers 7 schemes and 30+ color palettes. Smart Labels: Add data and leaf labels that auto-adjust inside or outside the shape for better readability. Center Circle: Customize center circle with text, icons, measures, and images. Interactive Mouseover: Hover for Interactive Info Display. Fill Patterns: Highlight gauges with patterns or upload your own. Conditional Formatting – Create rules based on measure or category rules. Other features included are ranking, annotation, grid view, show condition, and accessibility support. Business Use Cases: Project Management: Track task progress for efficient project oversight. Financial Dashboard: Gain instant insights into key financial metrics. Try Activity Gauge for FREE from AppSource Check out all features of the visual: Demo file Step-by-step instructions: Documentation YouTube Video: Video Link Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/ Follow Powerviz: https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U Decomposition Tree – All Expanding Decomposition tree All Expanding Visual now allows you to add a legend field. This creates additional column chart beside each node showing breakdown from another dimension. This is depicted in image below. The visual below analyzes the revenue of two largest consumer good companies Unilever and P&G by products. We add region field in the legends section to show additional breakdown of Revenue by Region. The data used is fictitious and used for analysis purposes only. The visual also allows you to add images to nodes. Check out the video on Decomposition Tree All Expanding - Power BI custom visual, demonstrating all the features of this custom visual. Download this visual from APPSOURCE Download demo file from APPSOURCE For more information visit https://www.excelnaccess.com/decomposition-tree/ or contact [email protected] Dynamic chart legends in Zebra BI Charts Which version of the plan am I looking at? - Finance teams ask this daily when switching between budgets, forecasts, and plans. Static chart labels in Power BI waste hours every week and lead to confusion, misinterpretation, and reporting errors. The new dynamic chart legends in Zebra BI Charts for Power BI remove that guesswork by automatically adapting chart legends to the selected filter or scenario, so you can always trust what you see. See the full update How it helps - In FP&A, Actuals are often compared against multiple baselines. Waterfall charts are ideal for this, but static legends stay fixed even when scenarios change. Real-world use cases Comparing forecast versions: Before, every scenario looked the same: ‘Plan’. Now, legends show AC 2024 vs Revised Forecast Q3, eliminating ambiguity. Year-over-year analysis: Previously, reports displayed AC [Year] regardless of selection. Now, legends update from AC 2024 vs PY 2023 to AC 2025 vs PY 2024. Regional reporting: Legends now reflect the active region: AC vs EMEA Budget or AC vs Americas Budget, without manual checks. Together with dynamic titles and dynamic column headers, Zebra BI delivers a fully responsive, accurate, and effortless reporting experience in Power BI. Explore Zebra BI for Power BI Drill Down Bubble PRO by ZoomCharts Say hello to the latest visual by ZoomCharts! With Bubble PRO, you can create visually impressive and user-friendly bubble charts that make complex data simple to explore. What sets Bubble PRO apart from other visuals is the user experience. UI interactions are made as intuitive as possible: freely pan the chart, pinch or scroll to zoom in, click on a marker to drill down, and quickly make single or bulk selections. Coupled with smooth UI animations, seamless cross-filtering and full touch support, you can design more interactive and insightful reports. Main features Drill Down: Create a multi-level hierarchy; and click to drill down. Data-driven Formatting: Apply custom marker colors, shapes, or images directly from data. Trendlines: Show a linear or polynomial regression line that dynamically recalculates whenever the chart changes. Thresholds: Display up to 4 reference lines or areas on each axis. Area Shading: Highlight up to 8 custom areas with rectangles or ellipses. We also have other news: you can now sign up to the free Developer License and use Bubble and 20+ other ZoomCharts visuals in Power BI Desktop for a year! Get Bubble PRO on AppSource Power BI Theme Generator In September 2023, our BIBB Report Theme Generator for Power BI was spotlighted on the Power BI blog. Since then, we've rebuilt and expanded it to help teams standardize look-and-feel, meet accessibility baselines, and export production-ready JSON themes in seconds. The generator streamlines brand color, typography, and visual style setup—making it easy for BI teams to deliver consistent, on-brand reports while reducing manual rework. What's new: a smarter color engine with contrast checks, gradients creation, AI powered themes creation, preset brand colors, apply theme through Fabric, select font, live preview on your own report, and advanced BI.ST mode for power users, while keeping the simplicity of one-click JSON export. Common use cases include (1) rolling out or updating corporate brand themes across workspaces, (2) accelerating new report builds with vetted defaults, and (3) improving report readability and accessibility with contrast-safe palettes. Learn more and see all features on our product page below. Links Find the simplest yet most powerful Power BI Theme Generator All features & documentation Power Gantt Chart by Nova Silva We’re thrilled to introduce one of the most requested features in Power Gantt: task dependencies! With our latest release, you can now add Finish-to-Start (FS) dependencies between tasks—visually represented as arrows connecting one task’s finish to another’s start. This powerful enhancement brings true project scheduling capability to Power BI. By visualizing dependencies, teams can better understand task sequences, identify bottlenecks, and manage timelines more effectively. Adding dependencies is simple—just define them in your dataset, and Power Gantt does the rest. Arrows will automatically appear on your Gantt chart, making relationships between tasks clear and actionable. Whether you’re managing product launches, construction schedules, or complex workflows, FS dependencies make your Power Gantt chart smarter, more dynamic, and easier to interpret. Start using dependencies today and take your project tracking to the next level! Try the Power Gantt Chart for FREE now on your own project data by downloading it from the AppSource. Questions or remarks? Visit us at: Power Gantt Chart for Power BI. Turn any image into data insights with Synoptic Panel by OKVIZ With Synoptic Panel, you can transform any SVG image into an interactive visual directly in your report. Perfect for floor plans, organizational charts, technical layouts, or geographical maps, it lets you integrate your data with images your audience already knows. A dynamic dashboard, where users can naturally explore insights by clicking on shapes and areas. This makes complex information easier to understand and more engaging to navigate. Key features include: Flexible image loading: use local files embedded in reports, remote URLs, or My Storage, our secure hosting service. Multi-level navigation: drill down into building floors or geographical regions, with automatic hierarchy creation when using remote configurations. Dynamic switching: change maps through slicers or bookmarks. Map Editor and Label Designer: fine-tune data binding, arrange and customize labels directly in the visual. Advanced coloring: apply conditional formatting and color rules to build heatmaps or highlight key areas. Map search: quickly locate maps or areas for faster access. Integrated security: safely host and distribute maps while keeping control of access. Full customization: adapt interactions, appearance, and data binding to your reporting needs. Explore real-world use cases and try Synoptic Panel for free! General Announcing deprecation of R and Python visuals in Embed for your customers solution We are announcing an important change for Power BI customers who use Embed for your customers with R or Python visuals. As part of our ongoing commitment to provide a secure, scalable, and robust analytics platform, we continually evaluate our feature set to ensure alignment with industry standards, customer needs, and platform performance. What’s Changing? Starting May 2026, Power BI will end support for the ability to embed reports and dashboards containing R or Python visuals using Power BI’s Embed for your customers solution (also known as app owns data) and Publish to web scenarios. Embed for your customers typically involves a custom app which manages authentication directly, and for which app users do not need Power BI licenses. This change does not impact customers leveraging secure embeddings to SharePoint, Website or Portal. Embed for your organization (also known as user owns data) scenarios are also not impacted. Timeline for Deprecation Announcement & Guidance: Effective immediately, customers are notified of the upcoming deprecation. Deprecation Date: Official support for embedding R and Python visuals in PaaS scenarios will end on 05/01/2026. Post-Deprecation: After this date, any embedded Power BI reports or dashboards containing R or Python visuals will still load, but the R or Python charts will display as blank. Reports without these visuals will continue to function as expected. Recommended Actions for Customers Review all embedded Power BI reports and dashboards to identify usage of R or Python visuals. Plan to update or redesign any affected reports using alternative Power BI visuals or DAX-based analytics. Consider leveraging Fabric Notebooks for more sophisticated or technical visualizations. Consult the Power BI & Fabric documentation for guidance on using alternative visuals effectively. Support and Resources We understand that this change may require updates to your existing solutions. Please reach out via the Power BI community forums or through your Microsoft account representative for personalized guidance. Closing This concludes this month’s update. We hope the information provided in this update is useful. If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review. As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Announcing Public Preview of Multiple Audiences for Power BI Apps
Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of Multiple Audiences in the Power BI Apps, one of the highly requested features from the community. With multiple audiences for an App, now Power BI App author can create multiple audience groups within the same App and assign different permissions to each group. Prior to this feature, to create multiple Apps for different audiences, the App authors had to set up different workspaces to register Apps for each audience. This workspace level isolation resulted in content duplication and operational overhead for the App Authors. With this new capability, the authors can decide which content artifact such as reports, dashboards, etc. should be shared with specific audience groups within an App using a single workspace. This allows fine-grained access permissions for the App consumers who can consume various artifacts in the App based on their group permissions and minimizes operational overhead for the App authors. Note: We have made some changes to the Workspace UI. Read the Consideration and Limitations section at the bottom of the blog to learn more. Get started with the Multiple Audiences for a Power BI App – The App Author view We have revamped the old app authoring experience to allow Apps authors to seamlessly create audience groups within a Power BI App and add access permissions on the artifacts such as reports and dashboards within the app. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to get started with the new experience. Step1: Register an app using the Setup Tab App setup tab allows app authors to register an App and add details such as App's name, description, logo, etc. Step 2: Add content artifacts using the new Content tab We have now added a “Content” tab in the UI experience that allows App authors to easily add content artifacts such as reports, dashboards etc. and even links to other websites. By clicking on “Add content” button in the “Content” tab, the App authors can select artifacts that they want to add from the current workspace. See below. The App author can also preview the content of the added artifacts. App authors can also add links to websites by clicking the “Add a link” from the drop-down menu next to “Add content” The App author can also change the order of the content artifacts in the App by: 1) Dragging and dropping the artifacts. 2) Using “move up” or “move down” options next to each artifact. Step3: Create and manage audience groups using the Audience tab The new “Audience” tab allows App authors to create and manage audience groups within an App. Furthermore, by using the “Manage Audience Access” pane, the author can specify which groups or users should be added to the current audience group. The app author can also change the name of the audience by double clicking on the default audience label. The app author can create up to 10 audience groups within an App. By clicking the hide/unhide icon next to each artifact, the App authors can control the access to each artifact within an App. Step 4: Share the App with the App consumers App authors can share the published apps by clicking the “Copy link” button at the bottom of the Setup page. This generates a shareable app link that App authors can share with their consumers. The app consumers can also request access to the app by searching for the app from Apps marketplace or AppSource. Once app is installed, the app authors can visit the app permission management page by clicking on “Manage permissions” in their Apps Tab to approve/decline any access request. App consumer View The App consumers can only see the content artifacts based on the access permissions for their respective audience groups. Consumers who have access to multiple audience groups will see group tabs on the top bar to switch between different audience views easily (as shown below). By default, the consumers are displayed the “All” tab view, which is a consolidated view showing all content artifacts that they have access to. The App consumer can browse different audience groups tab to see what artifacts are added for that group. Considerations and Limitations For the public preview, we have disabled the “Include in App” column in the Workspace. The app author can add/delete a content from an app by clicking on the “Update app” button. A pending request will not be approved unless an audience group is selected for the consumer. The audience group can be selected by clicking the “Audience” drop down button on the app permission management page. By default, all the newly added content, to an already published app, is marked as invisible. The app author must go to each audience group and manually unhide it. Let us know what you think! This is just a beginning, and we have many more exciting new features coming to the Power BI Apps. If you have any suggestions regarding products improvements or new features that you would like to see for Power BI Apps, please submit an idea here.
Manage failure notifications from the monitoring hub in Fabric (Preview)
Author: Michael Bruhjell Manage failure notifications for all your scheduled items from a single location. The monitoring hub in Microsoft Fabric now includes a Schedule failures page where you can view, configure, and update notification recipients — no more opening each item individually.
Outbound Access Protection for semantic models (Preview)
Author: Kay Unkroth, Principl Program Manager - Outbound Access Protection (OAP) is a workspace-level network security and governance feature that blocks outbound traffic from a workspace by default and lets you allow only the destinations you explicitly trust. With this preview, you can now extend OAP to semantic models. Power BI reports aren't part of this preview yet; report support is coming in a separate announcement soon.
Pre-Announcing Better Power BI Report Integration with OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)
The public preview of the viewing experiences mentioned in this blog are now available in all tenants. The Power BI Desktop capabilities mentioned in this blog will become available in a future version of Desktop. We’re excited to pre-announce that in the coming weeks we’ll start a public preview of improved Power BI report integration with OneDrive and SharePoint. We’re making two improvements: Quickly view your Power BI files directly in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint (now available) Work seamlessly in Power BI Desktop with files in OneDrive and SharePoint These are important changes because many Power BI authors use OneDrive and SharePoint to collaborate on their reports before publishing through the Power BI service. We think these new updates will streamline their workflows, and help more people use Power BI. The ability to view Power BI files directly in OneDrive and SharePoint preview requires Power BI Admins to opt-in to enable the preview. The ability to share links to Power BI reports saved in OneDrive and SharePoint from Power BI Desktop preview is on by default and requires Power BI Admins to opt-out to disable the preview. Let’s take a closer look at the new experiences. Viewing Power BI reports directly in OneDrive and SharePoint Until now, viewing a report stored in OneDrive and SharePoint required downloading both the Power BI file, and Power BI Desktop. With the new view in OneDrive and SharePoint capably, you immediately get to see your fully interactive report in a browser. This capability is off by default. Work with your Power BI admin to enable it. The first step is to locate a Power BI file in your organization’s OneDrive or SharePoint document library. When you click on the Power BI file, the report opens directly in the browser, instead of requiring downloading the file and opening it in Power BI Desktop. You can then explore and analyze the report directly in the browser. To view a Power BI report in OneDrive and SharePoint you will need a Power BI Pro, Premium Per User, or E5 license. In the future, we will incorporate even greater parity with Office and plan to allow you to: Open the report in the Power BI Desktop application from the browser without requiring downloading of the file Autosave edits in Power BI Desktop to the cloud Edit the report directly in the browser View Power BI reports connected to datasets in the Power BI service Suggest recent files in your OneDrive and SharePoint libraries through search capability Refresh data in the browser Allow B2B users to view reports in the browser This initial release is a limited experience. Visit the Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint documentation for a full list of current limitations and considerations. How to enable public preview for viewing reports in OneDrive and SharePoint The new Power BI integration with OneDrive and SharePoint is disabled by default at the start of public preview. You can enable the feature in the Power BI Admin portal. Set new Users can view Power BI items saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) setting to Enabled. The setting is under Tenant settings > Integration settings. Learn more about enabling the setting in the Admin portal. Work seamlessly in Power BI Desktop with files in OneDrive and SharePoint Many report authors open and save their Power BI files to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint during report creation. This helps with file versioning, collaborating with other authors, and ensuring a backup of files is always in the cloud. In an upcoming release of Power BI Desktop, the public preview will allow you to open and save Power BI reports in OneDrive and SharePoint through Power BI Desktop features. You will need to enable these experiences in Power BI Desktop (see how later in this blog post). When you Open items in Power BI desktop, you'll have the option to view your OneDrive and SharePoint items. You'll get access to your OneDrive for Business, quick access to your Teams and SharePoint sites, and you'll be able to browse more places. When you open a Power BI file, it opens in Desktop right away. This simplified workflow helps you quickly open files and make sure they save back to your preferred cloud hosted location, where it benefits from version control and serves as a backup. You will also be able to use the Share button at the top right-hand corner in Power BI Desktop. A dialog box will open that will prompt you to first save the file to OneDrive or SharePoint if not already saved. You will then be able to send a shareable link to an individual or group or copy a shareable link to your clipboard to send to others. Sharing in this way use standard OneDrive and SharePoint sharing UI and services. Default Power BI configured Microsoft Information Protection labels are applied to the file before it is saved. Your organizational policies for sharing through OneDrive and SharePoint govern to whom and how the Power BI item can be shared. Those who receive the link will be able to open the report in their browser if the capability is enabled by their Power BI Admin and if they meet all licensing requirements. Users who can't view in the web browser can download the file, if they have permission, and open it in Power BI Desktop. Visit the Power BI Desktop OneDrive and SharePoint integration documentation for a full list of current limitations and considerations. How to enable public preview for Power BI Desktop features For opening, saving, and sharing Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint to show up in Power BI Desktop, you will need to enable the appropriate capabilities through the file tab by selecting Options and settings > Options > Preview features. Enable the Save to OneDrive and SharePoint and Share to OneDrive and SharePoint features to try the public preview in Power BI Desktop. Power BI admins can turn off the ability to share through OneDrive for Business and SharePoint in the admin portal. You'll find the new Users can share links to Power BI files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint through Power BI Desktop under Tenant settings > Integration settings. Learn more about the admin setting for sharing from Power BI Desktop. When the setting is disabled in the Admin portal, the Share button will be disabled when users attempt to use it in Power BI Desktop. Users will still have the option to open and save to their OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Document library, which many already do today by sync’ing their local file system. Distributing insights in the best way for your organization Organizations need to build a single source of truth where everyone can find the most authoritative and up to date insights. Publishing to the Power BI service, and distributing reports through the Power BI app are critical elements this process. These new OneDrive and SharePoint capabilities compliment existing processes by meeting the needs of authors, who often collaborate as a team before publishing official version of reports through the Power BI service. It also helps organizations with people who are just starting out. Users already familiar with sharing content in OneDrive and SharePoint will have a greater jumping off point to start with Power BI. More to come We’re very excited for this update in the Power BI journey. Head over to ideas.powerbi.com and vote for further improvements we could make. We would love to hear your feedback on the new Power BI and OneDrive for Business and SharePoint capabilities. We’re just getting started on our plans! We look forward to creating more features that will help you more easily interact with and get insights from your data through Power BI and Office integration experiences.Heads up: Power BI OneDrive and SharePoint report viewing will be on by default starting in October
Earlier this year we made an exciting announcement about enhancing Power BI report integrations with OneDrive and SharePoint. The public preview for quickly viewing your Power BI files directly in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint was released as an opt-in experience in May 2023. In the coming weeks the public preview to view Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint will be turned on by default in your tenants unless you take action before September 29th, 2023. We’re sharing this information now so you can understand what you need to do if you do not want this on automatically in your organization. If you miss the deadline and the feature turns on by default in your tenant, you always have the option to turn if off later. This blog post describes functionality that is currently in opt-in public preview. We expect the public preview on-by default setting to reach commercial cloud tenants the week of 10/1/2023. The feature is not yet available in government cloud tenants. Default setting activation - Here's what you need to know We’re excited to inform you that the public preview for viewing Power BI files directly in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries will be turned on by default for all Power BI users starting the first week of October. The setting that will enable this functionality by default is a new setting available in your Microsoft Fabric admin portal today called, "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) - UPDATE". The setting visually appears as enabled, but will not go into effect until the first week of October, so that you can configure your preferences before the feature is turned on by default. Below is a breakdown of the original setting, the new setting, and what will happen at each phase. Original setting name: "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)" This is the original public preview setting for viewing Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries. This setting is disabled by default and the state of this setting is controlling the functionality of the feature in your tenant today. New setting name: "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) - UPDATE" This is a new public preview setting for viewing Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries. This setting will be on by default the first week of October. If you do not want this feature on by default, you will need to disable it before September 29th, 2023. Date Setting(s) that appear in the admin portal Setting controlling feature in your tenant What happens? Today - Original setting - New setting Original setting New setting appears in the admin portal. New setting state does not yet impact the feature in your tenant. September 29th, 2023 - Original setting - New setting Original setting Deadline to disable the new setting if you do not want the feature on by default. First week of October 2023 - New setting only New setting The state of the new setting as of September 29th will be rolled out in all tenants. Original setting is removed from the admin portal. Taking control of your preferences: We understand that every organization has its unique needs and preferences. While we're enabling this feature by default, we're also providing you with the flexibility to opt-out if necessary. If you prefer not to have this integration activated for your Power BI environment, you have until September 29th to make this adjustment. Don’t worry, if you change your mind after the deadline, you can always turn on/off the ability to view Power BI reports stored in OneDrive and SharePoint through the admin portal later. Steps to take if you do not want this setting on by default: Navigate to the Tenant settings tab in the Fabric admin portal. Locate the Integration settings section. Find the "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) - UPDATE" setting. It's very important that you find the setting with the word 'UPDATE' in it! Toggle the enabled switch to disabled and select apply. You must do this action by September, 29th 2023. The state of the new setting will go into effect the first week of October. Therefore, if you've disabled the new setting before September 29th, the feature will not be enabled in your tenant. Additional details and context Additional details and context about the two settings for viewing Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint is shared in this section. The original opt-in public preview setting, “Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)", is found above the new setting. This setting will also include a note that reads, “This admin setting is currently in effect in your tenant. During the first week of October, this setting will be removed from the admin portal and the state of the setting directly below this one, "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) update" will then go into effect. Learn More” The new updated setting, “Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) – UPDATE", is found below the original setting. This new setting will also include a note that reads, “This admin setting is not currently in effect in your tenant. If you do not want this setting on by default in your tenant, you'll need to disable it before September 29th, 2023. During the first week of October, this setting will take effect and the setting directly above this one, "Users can view Power BI items saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview)” will be removed from the admin portal. Learn More” During the first week of October the following will take place: The original opt-in public preview setting, "Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview).” Will be removed from the admin portal, and the status of that setting will no longer be in effect in your tenant. The new preview setting, “Users can view Power BI files saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) – UPDATE” will then go into effect and follow whatever status was set on September 29th, 2023. What feature are we talking about exactly? Viewing Power BI reports directly in OneDrive and SharePoint Until now, viewing a report stored in OneDrive and SharePoint required downloading both the Power BI file, and Power BI Desktop. With the new view in OneDrive and SharePoint capability, you immediately get to see your fully interactive report in a browser. You start by clicking a Power BI report in your OneDrive or SharePoint document library. The report will open directly in your browser, instead of requiring downloading the file and opening it in Power BI Desktop. You can then explore and analyze the report directly in the browser. For more details about this feature visit the original blog post announcement. This initial release is a limited experience. Visit the Power BI files in OneDrive and SharePoint documentation for a full list of current limitations and considerations. Embrace the Future of Power BI Collaboration We're incredibly excited about the possibilities that this enhanced integration brings to your Power BI experience. We believe that by defaulting to this feature, we're not just optimizing collaboration, but also paving the way for more dynamic and impactful reporting. Mark your calendars and ensure you've configured your preferences by September 29th. We're confident that once you experience the seamless integration firsthand, you'll wonder how you ever collaborated without it. We look forward to taking the next step to make Power BI work like other Office tools, so that more people can use data to quickly make important decisions. Enabling OneDrive and SharePoint viewer by default will help with file versioning, collaborating with other authors, and ensuring a backup of files is always saved in the cloud. Thank you for choosing Power BI to power your data analytics journey. We remain committed to providing you with the best tools and features to drive your organization's success.Power BI March 2026 Feature Summary
Welcome to the Power BI March 2026 Feature Summary—and welcome to FabCon! As FabCon gets underway, this month’s update reflects the momentum we’re seeing across Power BI and the conversations happening with customers right now. March brings a thoughtful set of improvements across Copilot, reporting, modeling, and data connectivity—focused on making everyday authoring smoother, visuals more expressive, and analytics experiences more flexible and open. Whether you’re refining reports, enabling more interactive analytics, or modernizing semantic models, there’s plenty to explore in this release—and we’re excited to keep the conversation going throughout FabCon. If you haven’t already, check out Arun Ulag’s hero blog “FabCon and SQLCon 2026: Unifying databases and Fabric on a single, complete platform” for a complete look at all of our FabCon and SQLCon announcements across both Fabric and our database offerings. Contents March Monthly Update Video https://youtu.be/INwbDNhRMG0 March Power BI Desktop Version number: v: 2.152.882.0 Date published: 03/15/2026 Events and Announcements Power BI DataViz World Championships live at FabCon and SQLCon Atlanta! Four finalists took the stage at FabCon to compete for the title of world champion, view the preliminary round entries that sent them to the finals. We'd like to offer a huge congratulations to the winner, Gustavo Bavia the Power BI Dataviz World Champion! Couldn't make it to Atlanta or just want more FabCon+SQLCon? Join us in Barcelona this September! FabCon Europe is happening again in 2026. Mark your calendars for September 28 – October 1, 2026. Register now to access Super Early Bird pricing! General Deprecation of Old File Picker Experience in Power BI Desktop Beginning April 2026, as part of the SU04 release, users will no longer be able to access the old file picker experience in Power BI Desktop. In January, we announced an updated file picker experience that provides users with a more intuitive, straightforward way of navigating between files and folders. As of next month, we are moving the updated experience out of preview and making it the default experience in Power BI Desktop. With this change, users will no longer be able to toggle between the old and updated experience. Note: No action is required from users as part of this deprecation; this is simply an informational announcement. QuickBooks Online Connector Retirement The QuickBooks Online connector is being retired and will no longer be supported as of March 2026. As part of our ongoing platform evolution, this change streamlines our connector portfolio and ensures our continued commitment to only the highest level of secure data connectivity. After retirement, customers will no longer be able to create new connections, and existing connections may no longer function. Copilot and AI Copilot pane user experience update To match the standalone experience, we’ve updated the Copilot pane in Reports and Apps to have the same look and feel. Before After Figure: Power BI Copilot pane showing current user experience Figure: Power BI Copilot pane showing updated user experience to match standalone Functionally, the pane operates the same as before with the same capabilities. You may notice a few small changes in behavior: The starting button suggestions will disappear after you start your conversation. If you need to find them again, you can access them from the prompt guide (book icon): Figure: Power BI Copilot pane with prompt guide icon or clear your chat to start over: Figure: Power BI Copilot pane with clear chat history sweep icon Input box now appears enabled while processing an ongoing request and you can type your next prompt. However, you will still need to wait until the current prompt finishes before submitting your next. The copy action has been moved to the bottom of the response output next to the feedback buttons. Figure: Power BI Copilot pane with text summary response and copy icon Learn more about the Copilot report pane in our documentation. Copilot feedback update Across all Power BI Copilot experiences, you’ll see an updated feedback dialog that now allows you add diagnostics with your submission to the product team. Sharing diagnostics with your thumbs up or down feedback provides more conversational context to your rating and is especially helpful during support case investigations. You can also preview the diagnostics file before submission to ensure you are not sending any sensitive information. Before After Figure: Previous Power BI Copilot feedback dialog experience Figure: Updated Power BI Copilot feedback dialog experience with diagnostics attached Learn more about our Power BI Copilot experiences in our documentation. Reporting AI Narrative auto refresh Instead of clicking Refresh every time you select a slicer in a report with the AI Narrative visual, use the Auto refresh toggle in the visualizations pane. This enables the summary to update automatically whenever a slicer selection changes, creating a smoother and more efficient reporting experience. Figure: AI narrative message displayed when a slicer is selected in the report Figure: Toggle the option to enable automatic refresh of the AI Narrative in the format pane Translytical task flows (Generally Available) Translytical task flows enable end users to perform actions directly within Power BI reports, such as updating records, adding data, or initiating workflows in other systems, all without navigating away from the report. Figure: Translytical task flow in Power BI Translytical task flows use Fabric user data functions to connect reports to underlying data sources. Common scenarios include editing data records in place, adding annotations, deleting outdated entries, and calling external APIs like Azure OpenAI. For example, a sales team can update discount values directly in a report, or request approvals that post automatically to Teams. Data writeback supports Fabric SQL databases, Fabric warehouses, and Fabric lakehouses (for files). For heavy read/write reporting scenarios, SQL database is the recommended data source. To get started, refer to the Translytical task flows overview documentation or follow the step-by-step tutorial to build your first task flow. Modern visual defaults and customizing theme improvements (Preview) Power BI Desktop visuals now start with a modern look. This preview introduces an updated base theme aligned with Fluent 2, featuring subtitles, uniform padding, style presets, and a grey canvas background at 1080x1920px by default. Charts display with smooth lines, slicers default to dropdown mode, and buttons have a refreshed appearance without manual formatting. _styling_showi Figure: Example report page with modern visual defaults applied—uniform padding, updated typography, and refreshed visual styling on a gray 1080×1920 canvas Enable the preview in Options and settings > Options > Preview features by turning on modern visual defaults and customizing theme improvements. This preview is available in Power BI Desktop, and published reports retain the new base theme for editing in the browser. The base theme on existing reports remains unchanged until you go to View > Themes > Customize current theme and select Update theme. The theme schema also supports setting page size and defining reusable named colors. Please share your feedback through the Modern Visuals Preview Feedback form, and learn more in the Use report themes in Power BI Desktop documentation. Custom totals (Preview) Table and matrix visuals display a DAX measure by category, with a total. The total (which you can toggle on or off) evaluates the measure in the entire filter context of the report page, rather than simply summing the category values, as in the waterfall visual. This ensures the correct result is shown for many non-additive calculations, such as averages, counts, margins, and maximum (or latest) values, among others. This is an intended design; the behavior of totals in these visuals is like tables and pivot tables in Excel. Understanding this behavior helps explain why a total may differ from a simple sum of the rows in a table or matrix. To illustrate, the following example demonstrates this behavior. The calculations for DAX measures average sales and number of customers are non-additive, so the totals in the table do not show the sum of all categories, as they do for an additive measure such as total sales: Figure: Sales by Category summary showing Bikes as the primary revenue driver ($46.98M total sales), contributing most of the $62.17M total across 18,485 customers Some report authors wish for more control over totals in tables and matrices. Custom totals are a new feature to address scenarios where a summed row total is the desired behavior for these visuals. Keeping the measure definition unchanged, a custom total instead adjusts the visual’s aggregation logic to override the measure’s default total behavior. Using this feature does not alter the underlying DAX measure; it changes how the total row is calculated for the configured visual only by using a visual calculation. Setting a Custom total is easy. First, make sure the visual calculations preview is turned on. Then, to set a custom total, right-click a column or use the Build pane to choose or define the desired calculation, without writing DAX. Options such as Sum, Min, Max Count (Distinct) and Count allow you to tailor the total to the context of the visual. “Reset to default” will return the total to the default DAX-driven total behavior whenever needed. Figure: Right-click menu showing how to customize a visual’s total calculation (preview) by selecting an aggregation method such as Sum, Min, Max, Count (Distinct), or Count Once you set a custom total, an Excel-like indicator appears. For instance, after setting Number of Customers to Sum, the column title updates: Figure: Power BI Copilot pane showing the prompt guide (book) icon next to the “Ask a question about this report” input box Custom totals use visual calculations and share their limitations. For example, formatting is not automatically applied to custom totals; use Data Format settings to format them, just as with visual calculations. Although Custom totals add flexibility and convenience, they don’t replace Power BI’s default total behavior, which remains the most accurate representation of the measure as defined in DAX. Learn more about Custom totals and how they work in our table and matrix. Series label leader lines for line charts Leader lines for series labels are now available on line charts and related visuals, making it easier to understand which line belongs to which label—especially in dense or overlapping scenarios. Figure: Series label leader lines on a line chart, connecting each label to its corresponding series for easier identification in dense visuals When enabled, leader lines visually connect each series label to its corresponding data point, improving readability without changing which labels appear. The feature includes smart layout logic to avoid label collisions, along with formatting options for line style, width, and transparency so you can match your visual design. Leader lines turn on automatically when series labels are enabled for new reports, while existing reports remain unchanged. Series labels are also selectable, which highlight a line and turn on the markers. To select multiple items, use multi-select (Ctrl on Windows or Command on macOS). Figure: Selecting series labels highlights the corresponding lines and shows markers, making it easier to compare multiple series For more information about visualizations in Power BI, refer to the Line charts in Power BI documentation. Report theme updates This month introduces two new enhancements to custom report themes, providing you with greater control over your report's formatting. You can now define a default page size directly in your theme file. When you add a page section to your theme JSON, any new pages added to your report automatically use those dimensions. This feature helps teams maintain consistent report layouts without manually configuring each page. For example, you can set a custom 1920x1080 resolution for presentation-ready reports: { "name": "Page Size Theme Example", "$schema": "reportThemeSchema-2.149.json", "visualStyles": { "page": { "*": { "pageSize": [ { "pageSizeTypes": "Custom", "pageSizeWidth": 1920, "pageSizeHeight": 1080 } ] } } } } You can also now reference structural theme colors such as background and foreground. This example shows how to set different colors in a table visual preset. { "name": "Structural Colors Theme Example", "$schema": "reportThemeSchema-2.149.json", "foreground": "#242424", "background": "#FFFFFF", "secondaryBackground": "#F5F5F5", "visualStyles": { "tableEx": { "*": { "columnHeaders": [ { "fontColor": { "solid": { "color": "foreground" } }, "backColor": { "solid": { "color": "secondaryBackground" } } } ], "values": [ { "fontColor": { "solid": { "color": "foreground" } }, "backColor": { "solid": { "color": "background" } } } ] } } } } To learn more about creating custom themes, refer to the Create custom report themes in Power BI Desktop documentation. Input slicer now supports conditional formatting The input slicer now supports conditional formatting (Fx) across multiple visual elements in the formatting pane. You can apply dynamic formatting rules to text colors, icon colors, borders, and accent bars based on measures or field values in your data. rmatting_pan Figure: Input slicer conditional formatting (Fx) options in the formatting pane Elements that support conditional formatting include: Filters: Text color, Dismiss button color Filter operator: Text and icon color Apply button: Icon color Input box: Placeholder text color and accent bar color Background and border colors for each element. This update gives you greater control over the input slicer's appearance, allowing you to create visual cues that respond to your data. For example, you can change the accent bar color based on a status field or highlight the apply button when certain conditions are met. Learn more about the input slicer and its formatting options in the Create and use an input slicer documentation. Modeling Direct Lake in OneLake (Generally Available) Power BI is standardizing open-data formats by adopting Delta Lake and Parquet to help you avoid vendor lock-in and reduce data duplication. This minimizes data silos and fragmentation, offering a single source of truth across the enterprise. Direct Lake storage mode accelerates data-driven decisions by unlocking incredible performance directly against OneLake, without the need to manage costly, time-consuming data refreshes for large volumes of data in OneLake. In May 2023, we announced the revolutionary Direct Lake storage mode for Power BI semantic models and used Direct Lake on SQL, which reached general availability with Microsoft Fabric in November 2023. In March 2025, we introduced Direct Lake on OneLake semantic model creation from Power BI Desktop. For more information and a more in-depth look, check out the Deep dive into Direct Lake on OneLake blog post. Use Direct Lake on OneLake for compatibility with OneLake security, more modeling features, and faster query performance. Use Direct Lake on SQL when you depend on security rules defined in the SQL analytics endpoint with delegated identity mode, or you need fallback to DirectQuery. ntic_model_added_to_Direct_Lake_on Figure: The default selection is determined by whether the SQL endpoint is running in User ID mode or delegated mode Check out the Direct Lake overview for a full comparison. When you create a new Direct Lake semantic model from the SQL analytics endpoint page, you can choose Direct Lake on OneLake or Direct Lake on SQL. TMDL View in web modeling (Preview) In the coming weeks, TMDL View on the Web will become available in preview, introducing a new code‑first semantic modeling experience directly in the browser. With this preview, developers can script, modify, and apply changes to model objects directly in a code editor using Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL), without switching to Desktop or downloading model files. This experience provides immediate, code‑level visibility into all semantic model metadata (tables, measures, relationships, and more), enabling bulk edits, automation of repetitive tasks, and the reuse of definitions to improve consistency and productivity. Figure: Previewing semantic model changes from a TMDL script in TMDL View on the web For more details about TMDL view and the full list of capabilities in this release, refer to the documentation: Use Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) view in Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Learn DAX user-defined functions (Preview) This month, our ongoing preview of DAX user defined functions gets a few exciting updates: A new INFO.USERDEFINEDFUNCTIONS() function is now available that will return information about the user-defined functions in your model. Power BI normally keeps your DAX code in sync when you rename tables, columns, or measures, and it tracks dependencies automatically. We are bringing that same behavior to user‑defined functions. One limitation: unqualified names are interpreted as measure references, so they won’t be reliably fixed or included in dependency tracking when you intended them to refer to columns. An unqualified name is an object reference without a table prefix. New types to give you more expressive power and flexibility. In addition to the previously available AnyVal, Scalar, Table and AnyRef, we are adding CalendarRef, ColumnRef, MeasureRef and TableRef. Note that implicit type casting is not supported by these type hints. “Quick queries” for Functions in DAX Query View now supports “Define with references and evaluate.” This enhancement automatically finds all UDF and measure references within the UDF or measure expression being evaluated. Figure: Context menus in the semantic model pane showing options to define/evaluate functions and manage model elements (rename, delete, hide/unhide, collapse/expand) Formula bar is available for creating or modifying a UDF expression in Model Explorer. Syntax highlighting support for UDFs in TMDL View. Support for JSDoc block tags to author UDF description and parameters using the triple slash prefix (i.e. `///`) while in DAX Query View. Support for up to 256 UDF parameters (from the previous 12 parameters). As always, if you encounter issues with DAX user-defined functions, let us know and read more about DAX user-defined functions in our documentation. Data connectivity IBM Netezza ODBC Driver (Generally Available) With this update, customers gain a more reliable, supported path forward using their own Netezza driver as we transition away from the embedded Simba driver. This update ensures continued connectivity, long-term support, and a more future-ready experience for organizations using the Netezza connector. Customers do not need to install the new connector; you may reuse your existing connector but will need to install the new IBM Netezza ODBC driver. Figure: Netezza Connector Selection UI in Fabric Refer to the IBM Netezza ODBC documentation for more information. Visualizations Sankey Chart by Powerviz The Powerviz Sankey Chart is a dynamic flow diagram that visualizes the proportional movement of data, resources, or processes across categories or stages. With weighted connections and flexible layouts, it helps users uncover insights within complex systems. New Features Link Labels: Display values directly on Sankey links to understand flows instantly. Real and Absolute Values: Toggle between real and absolute node values to better understand true data figures. Level-wise sorting: Sort each level by ascending or descending order to keep flows organized, and easy to follow. Key Features Chart Orientation: Switch seamlessly between vertical and horizontal orientation. Node Customizations: Control node appearance, spacing, visibility, and interactions for optimal clarity. Multi-Level Support: Add multiple levels to visualize layered, hierarchical flows. Data Colors: Access to 30+ color palettes, including color-blind-safe options. Conditional Formatting: Highlight outlier flows using measure-based or category-based rules. Smart Labels: Display data and header labels for enhanced readability. Templates: Use built-in templates or design your own. Other features included are Import/Export Themes, Fill Patterns, Ranking, Show Condition, Grid View and more. Business Use Cases Customer Journey Mapping, Expense Breakdown, Supply Chain Flow. Try Sankey Chart visual for FREE from AppSource Check out all features of the visual Step-by-step instructions YouTube Video Learn more about visuals Follow Powerviz on LinkedIn Figure: Sankey Chart by Powerviz showing category-to-category flows with real/absolute value and level-sorting options Figure: Powerviz Sankey chart with multi-level flows and customizable formatting Drill Down Pie PRO (Filter) by ZoomCharts Pie PRO (Filter) enhances pie and donut charts in Power BI with advanced labeling and flexible category level reference markers, enabling users to understand performance context and interact with data directly on the chart. Key Features Advanced label customization: Configure names, values, and percentages. Arrange them across multiple lines. Apply custom fonts, colors, and backgrounds. Hide secondary details to keep attention to the most important information. Category level performance markers: Reference markers appear at the slice level, making it easy to see which categories are below, meeting, or exceeding a target without switching visuals or adding complex calculations. Add reference markers per category using any UTF 8 character or icon, including symbols or emojis. One-click drill down: Click on one or multiple slices to instantly filter other visuals in the report, combining performance insight with intuitive data exploration. Images on slices: Add images on slices to visually differentiate categories. Key use cases Category performance comparison with custom visual indicators Reports that require expressive yet compact labeling Executive dashboards where fast interpretation is critical Get Pie PRO (Filter) on AppSource. Figure: Drill Down Pie PRO showing regional sales distribution with multiple label and indicator styles Figure: Drill Down Pie PRO interface highlighting label customization and calculation-basis settings Let location drive your analysis with Icon Map Slicer for Power BI Icon Map Slicer is a powerful map visual, purpose-built as a slicer for Power BI with intuitive selections tools, dynamic field-of-view filtering and cross page synchronization. Enhanced 3D capabilities let your visualize terrain and data in three dimensions with support for 3D terrain, extruded polygons, 3D lines and 3D columns. Data Catalog New this month, the built-in geospatial catalog contains hundreds of layers ready to instantly enhance your map with additional context, or rich detailed boundaries, formatted and filtered by your Power BI data. Available map layers include: Administrative and Statistical Boundaries Infrastructure layers for Road, Rail and Water Census data including Population Density and Deprivation Indicators Environmental and Risk Factors Reference layers provide extensive formatting options and may be dynamically filtered using Power BI’s “fx” buttons. Many layers can be directly bound to the Power BI dataset enabling conditional formatting options, tooltips and selection. Filtering Capabilities Icon Map Slicer provides multiple options for selecting data: Automatically filter all visuals on the report based on longitude and latitude fields as you zoom and move the map Select all overlapping elements Lasso select Circle radius select Select all items within a polygon Sync selections between different pages of a Power BI report Extensive Range of Data Visualizations Power BI data can be presented on the map and conditionally formatted as: Circles 3D Columns Images, Icons or Emojis Geospatial Cells such as H3 (hexagons), S2 (rectangles), A5 (pentagons) Lines – straight, shortest path, 3D, or flow Shapes / Points / Line Strings from Power BI Data as Well-Known Text (WKT) or GeoJSON features Shapes from GeoJSON / KML / TopJSON or Shape files Vector tiles in with support for PMTiles RADIAL TREE The Radial Tree visual allows users to explore hierarchical relationships in an intuitive and engaging way. Designed for clarity and aesthetics, it arranges nodes in concentric circles, displaying parent-child connections through smooth radial links. The layout provides a balanced, symmetrical view that helps uncover patterns, dependencies, and clusters within complex datasets. The values can be encoded as bubble size or as distance from the center or previous level. The last level of nodes can be depicted as bars. Download this visual from APPSOURCE Download Demo File from APPSOURCE For more information visit excelnaccess or contact us. accoCOMMENT – Context-Driven Collaboration in Microsoft Power BI accoCOMMENT extends Microsoft Power BI with structured, enterprise-ready commenting — fully integrated with your semantic model and written directly to your own database. All comment data is stored together with the full report context (filters, dimensions, measures, row selections), ensuring tight integration with your semantic model. This guarantees that every comment is precisely linked to the exact data state it relates to — creating traceability, auditability, and analytical consistency. Key Features Database Writeback: All comments are stored in the customer’s own database — not in external services. Context Storage: Comments are saved together with report filter context for deep semantic integration. Rich Text: Structured formatting for clear communication. Document Upload: Attach supporting files directly to comments. Tags & Ratings: Classify and prioritize insights. Dropdown Lists: Controlled and validated inputs. Workflow & Dates: Assign responsibilities and deadlines. Dynamic Measure References: Insert live measures that automatically update. Highly configurable and adaptable to any existing data model and report. With accoCOMMENT, Power BI evolves from reporting to a fully governed, context-aware decision platform — without compromising data ownership or model integrity. Business Use Cases Sales Funnel Analysis, Financial Follow-Ups (Invoicing/Payments), User Onboarding, and Project Follow-Up Try accoCOMMENT for FREE from AppSource Check out all features of the visual: Demo_file Step-by-step instructions: Documentation Follow accoTOOL: on LinkedIn That’s a wrap! As always, we appreciate the thoughtful feedback and engagement from the Power BI community—it continues to shape how these features evolve. Many of the updates in this release reflect direct input from customers who are building, scaling, and operationalizing analytics every day. As FabCon gets underway, we encourage you to explore the new capabilities, especially those currently in preview, and share your feedback through the usual channels. Your insights help us refine the experience and inform us what comes next. Thank you for being part of the Power BI journey. We’re excited to hear what you build with the March updates and to keep the conversation going throughout FabCon and beyond.
Unify Datamart with Fabric Data Warehouse!
Introduction In May 2022, we announced the preview of datamarts in Power BI. This self-service capability within Power BI Premium empowers users of any level to uncover actionable insights from their own data in a relational database without any help from IT teams. Since the announcement, we have been monitoring your feedback from our blog posts to Microsoft Fabric ideas to better understand what you enjoy when working with datamarts and what you hope to see improved. From our various feedback forums, we have noticed the following recurring themes in datamarts: Highlights Simple, low-code centric experiences to start performing relational database analytics. Pre-provisioned managed database without requiring any tuning for a frictionless experience. Seamless integration with existing Power BI artifacts such as Dataflows for easy ETL. Requested features Add DDL/DML support for expanded T-SQL language capabilities Git integration to enable a collaborative and efficient review process with developers. Backup of datamarts data to maintain resilience and continuity of data infrastructure. Advanced security measures to control the level of access at a granular level. We appreciate your consistent comments to help improve our product and based on your feedback; we are announcing the unification of datamarts to become data warehouses in Microsoft Fabric! Reason for unification Although customers appreciate datamarts providing a simpler way to get SQL experiences for analytics, there’s worry about scale, performance, and going 'all in' because there’s no grow-up story. With the advent of Microsoft Fabric, you don’t have to choose between a Power BI Datamart or a full-blown data warehouse. Fabric data warehouse is the natural evolution of Power BI datamarts, built on next generation analytics technology and for the era of AI from Microsoft evolved from Azure Synapse Analytics and SQL Server. As Fabric Data Warehouse is generally available (GA), it provides enterprise-ready benefits beyond those of datamarts including: DDL/DML support: Create and manage SQL objects with DML/DDL support and multi-table transaction guarantees. Increased scalability: While datamarts are limited to 100GB, Fabric Data Warehouses can handle any data size with fast query execution and optimization. Open data format: All files stored as Delta/Parquet for cross engine interoperability enabling collaboration with business analysts and data scientists. AI integration: Built with AI from the ground up, the SQL engine is AI powered to offer the best query performance with no tuning required along with Copilot to simplify SQL development. Rich SQL security: Granular level security at the object, row, column levels are provided to help you ensure the right users have granular access. Cross-database queries: Query data across multiple databases within the same Fabric workspaces including Fabric data warehouses and SQL analytics endpoints. Elevated developer experience: You can ingest data to warehouse using multiple ways like data pipelines, dataflows and native high throughput Copy into statement. Along with this, rich intellisense, and TSQL notebook experience elevates experience to develop and consume data from warehouse. Source control capabilities: Deployment pipelines, Git integration, and SQL projects are all supported to improve the efficiency of your development collaboration. Integration with Fabric: Leverage other Fabric services for data science, analytics, or AI scenarios such as Fabric ML. Flexible licensing: Fabric Data warehouse is supported as part of your Power BI Premium Capacity subscription (P SKU), or as Fabric capacity (F SKU with pay-as-you-go or reservation model) starting at $0.36 per hour. Free 60-day trials are available to help you get started too. Direct lake model: Supports Power BI Direct Lake mode on tables which decreases the amount of time needed for a semantic model refresh and removes need for duplicate sets of data. Data recovery: Capabilities to clone tables and restore a warehouse to a prior point-in-time in event of accidental corruption or data loss. Next steps New datamarts Starting 1 st June 2025, creating a new Power BI datamart will not be available. As you go to the Fabric portal to create a new Datamart, you’ll be notified on datamart being retired. Existing datamarts Starting the first week of Nov 2025, Power BI datamarts will not be accessible from workspaces. To avoid losing your data and breaking reports built on top of datamarts, migrate your datamart to warehouse. Before starting the migration process, you can use the following tools to get a list of your datamarts: Admin Monitoring workspace – Feature Usage and Adoption report Purview Hub Power BI admin portal Power BI REST APIs The following options describe how to manually migrate your existing datamarts to a Fabric Data Warehouse. Option 1: Use the accelerator scripts to migrate your datamart to warehouse. Option 2: Use manual steps to migrate your datamart to warehouse as below. Navigate to your Datamart, click on Transform data in the ribbon, then Export template to export your Power BI datamart schema and data as a template in Power Query Online. Create a Fabric warehouse from the Fabric portal. From the Home tab of the warehouse, select the Get data option and then New Dataflow Gen2. Important: Creating a new dataflow gen2 through the warehouse will set each query’s destination to the current warehouse as the default destination, this can ultimately save you time by avoiding having to configure the destination for each query. You can also update or adjust these options including writing to different locations or changing the update method. Within the new dataflow gen2 editor, select Import from a Power Query Template located in the center of the empty editor. Select the save & run option, which will both publish your dataflow and start a refresh of your data loaded into the Fabric Data Warehouse. Connect your Power BI reports and dashboards to your Fabric Data Warehouse via the Default Semantic Model or as a data source. Additional considerations In this section, you’ll learn on how to optimize your datamart for Fabric Data Warehouse. Although these are optional, they may be helpful depending on what type of datamart features your organization is leveraging. Enable the Custom Semantic Model in your Fabric Data Warehouse Datamarts automatically add all tables to the default Power BI semantic model. In Fabric Data Warehouse, based on customer feedback, we have modified the default behavior to not automatically add tables and views to the default Power BI semantic model. This change will ensure the background sync will not get triggered. This will also disable some actions like 'New Measure', 'Create Report', 'Analyze in Excel'. If you want to change this default behavior, you can: Manually enable the Sync the default Power BI semantic model setting for each data warehouse or SQL analytics endpoint in the workspace. This will restart the background sync that will incur some consumption costs. Manually pick tables and views to be added to semantic model through Manage default Power BI semantic model in the ribbon or info bar. From here, you can then recreate any measures, relationships, or other business semantics as needed. To learn more on how to edit data models in the Power BI service, refer to, Edit Data Models documentation. Alternatively, you can script out the definitions and reapply to a new dataset programmatically. To first script out the default semantic model, you can use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). View the Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL) schema of the semantic model by scripting it out via the Object Explorer in SSMS. To connect, use the semantic model's connection string, which looks like powerbi://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/username. You can find the connection string for your semantic model in the Settings, under Server settings. From there, you can generate an XMLA script of the semantic model via SSMS's Script context menu action. For more information, see Dataset connectivity with the XMLA endpoint. Script out any row-level security (RLS) and reapply as needed Fabric Data Warehouse supports more security and governance controls than Power BI datamarts at a granular level. Every object in datamarts is accessible via a view in the Model Schema. You can easily create a new Schema called Model, add Views from the tables, and then provide SQL security there, or provide any custom T-SQL security needs as required, going far beyond the GUI of the datamart. Learn More Security for data warehousing in Microsoft Fabric Row-level security in Fabric data warehousing Incremental refresh with dataflows Gen 2 Incremental refresh is a feature that allows you to refresh only the data that has changed since the last refresh, instead of refreshing the entire data. This can improve the performance and efficiency of your dataflows and reduce the load on your sources and destinations. For guidance on how to set up incremental refresh with Dataflow Gen2, refer to the Pattern to incrementally amass data with Dataflow Gen2 documentation. Closing The unification of Power BI datamarts with Fabric Data Warehouses offers a significant evolution in Microsoft's analytics capabilities. By addressing user feedback and enhancing features such as scalability, security, and AI integration, Fabric Data Warehouses offer a robust solution for modern data needs. We encourage users to migrate their existing datamarts to Fabric Data Warehouses to take full advantage of these improvements and ensure continuity in their data operations. For detailed guidance on the migration process and to explore the benefits of Fabric Data Warehouses, please refer to the Upgrade a Power BI Datamart to a Warehouse documentation.
