Power BI September 2026 Feature Summary
As the Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, data, and analytics community gathers in Barcelona for the European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference, this month is packed with news. From new Copilot and AI experiences to reporting, modeling, data connectivity, developer enhancements, and mobile updates, we're sharing the latest innovations designed to help you build, analyze, and act on your data more effectively. Whether you're joining us in person or following along from afar, this roundup is your guide to everything new across Power BI this month. General Deprecation of Old File Picker experience in Power BI Desktop In April we deprecated the old file picker experience in Power BI Desktop. Starting in October, users using versions of Power BI Desktop from March 2026 or earlier will no longer be able to save and share Power BI files to OneDrive and SharePoint. Please ensure you update Power BI Desktop to keep using this functionality. Copilot and AI Power BI Agentic Experiences (Generally Available) Agentic development in Power BI is real, and it is already delivering value: whether you are starting from scratch with greenfield projects or building upon existing solutions in brownfield scenarios, BI developers can delegate the work to an agent, review the result, and refine it rather than starting from scratch every time. What makes this work is tools and context. Through Work IQ and Fabric IQ, the agent grounds its work in your business context—your data, your semantics, and the way your organization operates. Through skills—published by Microsoft in skills-for-fabric, shared by the community, or personalized by your own team—it also picks up your development context: the modeling and reporting practices, conventions, and workflows your team expects. Through tools such as the Power BI Authoring MCP server and the Power BI Desktop Bridge CLI, the agent can act on that context: reading and changing semantic models and reports directly, reloading its edits in Power BI tools, and reviewing its own work. Point an agent at a requirements document or a screenshot of the layout you want, describe what you need, and the agent can help accelerate the initial authoring pass, which you can then review and refine. rt authoring skills. What's available today The powerbi-authoring plugin in microsoft/skills-for-fabric bundling the semantic modeling and reporting agent skills and tools. It was recently updated to support report authoring for remote semantic models in Power BI service and an expanded range of supported report visuals, including custom visuals. To learn more, refer to the Power BI skills documentation. The local Power BI Authoring MCP server allows the agent to edit semantic models in Power BI Desktop. To learn more, refer to the Power BI Authoring MCP documentation. Power BI Desktop Bridge lets an agent reload changes in a running instance of Power BI Desktop and capture screenshots to check its own work. To learn more, refer to the Power BI Desktop Bridge documentation. Browser-based validation for remote report editing, so the agent can validate a report using a headless browser (an automated browser that runs without a visible user interface). Removing the local Power BI Desktop dependency allows the full authoring loop to run without Power BI Desktop, extending the agentic experience to Mac users and others who do not rely on a local installation. To learn more and get started, refer to the Power BI agentic documentation. Microsoft 365 Copilot is coming to Power BI (Preview) Copilot experiences have emerged across the applications people use every day, bringing AI closer to the work happening in each product. But this can also feel fragmented, with different entry points, separate conversations, and uncertainty about which Copilot agent to use. Our goal is to create a consistent Copilot experience that is available wherever people work. People should not have to leave the application they are using to find it. Microsoft 365 Copilot should be available within their experience, carry relevant context across experiences, and connect to the specialized intelligence of each product. We’re taking an important step toward that goal with a preview of Microsoft 365 Copilot integrated directly into Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. This integration gives users a familiar place to bring together business context and trusted data. Shared conversation history lets them continue a discussion as they move between Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences instead of starting over in each application. ower BI experience, including integration with Work IQ. In Power BI, a question no longer has to stop with the numbers in a report. A sales leader could use Fabric IQ to identify which regions are behind plan, then use Work IQ to connect the results with customer emails, meetings, account plans, and documents. They could summarize the complete picture and even kick off actions and tasks in Cowork, all from inside Power BI. This work context and ability to move directly from insight to action were not available in the standalone Power BI Copilot experience. the Cowork integration into the Power BI experience, highlighting the full Microsoft 365 experience embedded into Power BI. A new setting in the Fabric admin portal will determine whether this integration is available by enabling or disabling its entry point in the navigation pane. It will be off by default, giving administrators time to evaluate the experience before introducing it to their organization. Administrators can enable it when they are ready and disable it if they need to pause access. This setting is independent of the existing setting for standalone Power BI Copilot. If both settings are enabled, users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will see entry points for both experiences, and standalone Power BI Copilot will continue to appear on Home. If standalone Power BI Copilot is disabled and Microsoft 365 Copilot is enabled, users will see only the Microsoft 365 Copilot entry point. During the initial preview, the integrated experience is available only to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. These users receive the full Copilot Chat experience in Power BI and Fabric, bringing together Fabric data through Fabric IQ and relevant Microsoft 365 context through Work IQ. Existing permissions and governance controls continue to determine which content each user can access. Support for a broader Fabric audience will follow. This expansion will give Fabric users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license access to an integrated Copilot experience tailored to their available capabilities. The experience may differ from the full licensed offering, but it will extend Fabric IQ and conversational data experiences to more types of Fabric users. The preview will roll out with the setting turned off by default, with administrators choosing when to enable it for their organization. This is an important step toward one Copilot that meets people wherever they work, connecting the context surrounding each decision with trusted business data. To learn more, refer to the Copilot in Power BI documentation. Power BI data answers in Microsoft Copilot Chat (Generally Available) Users can find and ask questions about Power BI reports and semantic models directly from Microsoft 365 Copilot. They can search for relevant Power BI content, attach a report or provide a link, and ask questions in natural language. Powered by Fabric IQ, the experience uses the data, measures, relationships, and business logic already defined in Power BI to provide grounded answers. Users can also bring Power BI insights into conversations that include their Microsoft 365 work context, such as emails, meetings, and documents. Microsoft 365 Copilot now supports Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies and information protection controls for this experience. This helps organizations adopt conversational analytics while applying their existing policies for identifying, classifying, and protecting sensitive data. The experience continues to respect existing Power BI permissions and Microsoft 365 governance controls. Users can only access Power BI content they are authorized to view, and administrators retain control over whether Fabric data is available in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Organizations can use Power BI data answering in Microsoft 365 Copilot with production support and service commitments. This milestone makes it easier for users to bring trusted business data into the flow of work without leaving Microsoft 365 Copilot or creating a separate agent. To learn more, refer to the Fabric IQ in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (Frontier) documentation. Fabric IQ Plugin in Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork (Generally Available) Power BI data is available where multi-step work happens, so a business question, the analysis behind it, and the follow-up it triggers stay in one place. To ground a task in Power BI, users can search for relevant content, attach a report, or paste a link to a report or semantic model. Questions are answered using the data, measures, relationships, and business logic already defined in the semantic model. Coverage now extends to reports published through organizational apps, with improvements to content discovery, large model handling, schema selection, Verified Answers, and row-level value search. The plugin also carries forward the governance controls organizations rely on in Power BI: Existing access controls: Power BI permissions and row-level security determine which reports and semantic models each user can reach. Citations and sensitivity labels: Responses cite the Power BI content behind an answer and surface the Microsoft Purview Information Protection label applied to it, so users can see where a number came from and how it is classified. From insight to action: With Fabric IQ, users can analyze Power BI reports using natural language, uncover key findings, and put those findings to work right away in Cowork. Whether they are summarizing business performance, investigating a trend, or answering a data question, Fabric IQ turns trusted organizational data into outcomes. To learn more about supported scenarios, setup, and current considerations, refer to the Fabric IQ in Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork documentation. For licensing and pricing information, refer to Microsoft 365 Copilot plans and pricing. Build Fabric Apps more easily in GitHub Copilot App (Preview) Fabric Apps were introduced in June as an AI-first way to build custom web apps with Microsoft Fabric as the backend. This month we’re excited to share that building these Fabric Apps on your governed data has become even easier with the GitHub Copilot App, which gives you a natural language chat interface instead of a command-line interface. . To try it out, start by downloading the GitHub Copilot App. Then navigate to Customize > Plugins > Rayfin, and select Install to enable our dedicated plugin: Rayfin plugin in GitHub Copilot App. Once the plugin is enabled, simply start a new chat and work with Copilot to help plan your Fabric data app. After you review and approve the plan, ask the agent to execute it and specify the workspace where you want to deploy the app. . We look forward to seeing the amazing apps you build! Check out our community gallery for inspiration. Enhanced Report Consumption Copilot with Fabric IQ When viewing a Power BI report, you can enable Fabric IQ from the Copilot pane to better answer complex questions about your data. This enhancement merges existing Fabric IQ capabilities into Power BI Copilot report viewing mode, allowing Copilot to use a multi-step approach to evaluate data in the semantic model and refine its approach when generating a response. . With Fabric IQ enabled, Copilot can: Provide better answers to questions about your data based on detailed reasoning capabilities directly into the report viewing experience. Show reasoning steps to help you understand how Copilot provided an answer. Generate Fabric visuals to help you further analyze your data. Answers can include column, bar, stacked, line, area, pie, donut, scatter visuals. Provide the underlying DAX query and data table used to generate a response. . To learn more, refer to the Ask Copilot questions about your data documentation. New control for Copilot access to semantic models Power BI now provides semantic model editors with greater control over how Copilot can be used with their data. Users with write permissions can block read-only users from accessing a semantic model through Copilot and Microsoft’s remote MCP tools, supporting governance, compliance, and access-control requirements. The setting applies across Copilot experiences that query the semantic model, including Power BI Copilot experiences; Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Cowork; and data agents, remote Fabric MCP servers, and Power BI MCP servers. When disabled, users with read-only access won't be able to access that semantic model through these experiences. By default, the setting remains enabled to preserve the current behavior. This setting appears in the Copilot section with the following description: “Allow any person with read-only access to use AI (i.e. Copilot, Microsoft’s MCP tools) on the model and its related reports.” Setting that allows people with read-only permission to use AI experiences with the semantic model and its related reports. This update gives organizations a clear and enforceable way to control AI access to semantic model data while maintaining flexibility for semantic model editors. To learn more, refer to the Use Copilot with Semantic Models in Power BI documentation. Remote Power BI Authoring MCP Server (Preview) The Power BI Authoring MCP enables AI applications to create and modify semantic models in Fabric workspaces, without installing or maintaining anything local. This release also unblocks Mac users that want to use the Power BI Authoring MCP, because the server runs remotely and does not require local binaries. Use the following endpoint in AI applications such as GitHub Copilot App: https://api.fabric.microsoft.com/v1/mcp/powerbi/authoring The local Power BI Authoring MCP server, released in November 2025, remains generally available. It remains an option when an agent needs to work with Power BI Desktop, Power BI Project (PBIP) or TMDL files on disk. The local and remote servers support the same authoring capabilities. We recommend using the remote server when local development is not required, such as when creating a Direct Lake semantic model in a Fabric workspace. In the following example, the AI agent uses one tool call to create a Direct Lake semantic model connected to a Fabric Lakehouse: To learn more, refer to the Power BI Authoring MCP server documentation. Reporting New Report Ribbon on the web (Preview) The Report ribbon is now available on the web, providing a consistent experience for report consumption and authoring that more closely matches Power BI Desktop. The ribbon organizes commands into clear, easy-to-navigate tabs, making it easier for users to discover features, interact with reports, and complete editing and authoring tasks directly in the browser. It also introduces the new Design ribbon and additional capabilities that were previously unavailable on the web, such as Format Painter. This milestone brings greater consistency to Power BI report-authoring experiences and marks an important step toward a seamless, end-to-end reporting workflow on the web. As web authoring capabilities continue to expand, users will be able to accomplish more of their reporting tasks directly in the browser, enabling a more streamlined, productive workflow. Enable the Try the new ribbon (preview) at the top of the page to explore the new experience. You can disable the setting to return to the previous ribbon. To learn more, refer to the Report Ribbon on the web documentation. Live Visual Sharing in Outlook on the web (Preview) For years, sharing data through email has been stagnant. You could send a screenshot, but it immediately became stale. You could attach a report link, but recipients had to leave their workflow to find the context they needed. And every follow-up question often meant another screenshot, another export, or another email thread. Now, we're bringing a new way to share Power BI insights directly in the flow of work with Live Visual Sharing in Outlook. With Live Visual Sharing, you can insert a Power BI visual into Outlook on the web and share it as a live, interactive experience. Recipients can view and interact with the visual directly in Outlook while staying connected to the latest underlying data. When a live visual is shared, Outlook renders an interactive version of the Power BI visual. Rather than embedding a static image, the experience remains connected to the source report and retrieves current data when viewed. Recipients can: Interact with the visual directly in Outlook on the web. Access tooltips and explore data points. See filters and slicers applied at the time of sharing. View refresh information and data context. Navigate back to the source report when deeper analysis is needed. The result is a richer conversation around data, directly within Outlook. Sharing a live visual is simple: Open a Power BI report in the service. Select a visual to share, then select More options in the upper-right corner. Select Share. Select Link to this visual. A pop-up will appear asking if you want to use the current view (apply existing filters and slicers) or not. After selecting Create Link, the link is copied to your clipboard. Open Outlook on the web. This experience is not available in the Outlook desktop app. Create a new email. Paste the link in the email. The visual renders in loop after a few seconds! You can also share the same link in a Loop page, and the visual will also be rendered. By combining Power BI, Outlook, and Loop-powered experiences, we're bringing data closer to where collaboration happens. Live Visual Sharing can support more informed, data-driven conversations in Outlook. To learn more about Live Visual Sharing in Outlook, refer to the Share live Power BI visuals documentation. More control and context in Power BI Home (Generally Available) Power BI Home now provides additional context and personalization options to help users discover the right content more efficiently. With new freshness indicators and customizable list views, you can quickly identify the most relevant reports and semantic models, prioritize the metadata that matters most, and tailor the experience to fit your workflow. Find the right content more easily Discover the right content more easily with new Data Refreshed and Modified Date columns in Power BI Home. By bringing the freshness signals already familiar from workspace list views into Home, users can more easily spot recently updated reports and semantic models, distinguish between similar items, and quickly find the content that matters most. Whether you're checking for the latest business updates or deciding which refreshed report to open, you can navigate with greater confidence and less guesswork. Customize your Home list view Not every user, team, or organization relies on the same signals to discover content. With Column Options, you can show or hide metadata, drag and reorder columns to prioritize the information you use most, and reset to the default view at any time. Whether you rely on freshness signals, endorsements, sensitivity labels, or location information, you can tailor Home to match your workflow. To learn more, refer to the Power BI Home documentation. Set and reset column widths in table and matrix (Generally Available) You can now right-click a column header in a table or matrix and select Set column width to specify its width in pixels. This option helps report viewers improve readability and fit the information they need within the available space, without changing the report author’s design or affecting other viewers. Changes made by viewers last only for the current viewing session. To restore the width defined by the report author, right-click the column header and select Reset column width. To learn more, refer to the Adjust column width in Power BI tables documentation. Visual calculations for small multiples (Generally Available) You can now use visual calculations in visuals with small multiples. Create calculations such as moving averages and compare trends across categories without adding separate measures to the semantic model. In the visual matrix, the field in the small multiples field well appears on the ROWPAGES axis. You can select ROWPAGES by itself or combine them with ROWS and COLUMNS to control how the calculation moves through the visual. e: Create a moving average visual calculation for a line chart divided into small multiples by country. To learn more, refer to the Visual calculations overview documentation. Design ribbon for Power BI reports (Generally Available) The new Design ribbon brings report styling tools together in one location. Apply a built-in or organizational theme, open the Theme pane to customize report-wide defaults, or import and download theme files directly from the ribbon. You can also quickly open Page size, Page background, and Wallpaper settings for the current page. Two new built-in themes, Dark and Soft dark, use the new Versa color palette and styling that closely follows the Fluent 2 base theme. These themes let you design against a dark report canvas and return to the default light theme before publishing if needed. To learn more, refer to the Use the Design ribbon in Power BI documentation. Slider color options for Slicer visual (Generally Available) Match your slicer's slider to your report design. The Slicer visual's Between, Before, After, and Date picker settings include a Slider format section where you can turn the slider on or off, set the handle style, and choose colors for the handles, selected range, and track. Handle options adjust based on the Responsive layout toggle (General > Properties > Advanced options). When Responsive is on, handles appear as circles with Fill color, Border, and Size. When Responsive is off, handles appear as rectangular bars with Border, Width, and Height. To learn more, refer to the Slicer visual in Power BI documentation. Translytical task flows show user date function (UDF) information in button action (Generally Available) The formatting pane now displays the Workspace, Function set, and Data function assigned to a data function button. These read-only details help you confirm that the button references the intended function without reopening the OneLake catalog. This information is especially useful when you review or troubleshoot reports that use several functions or connect to functions across multiple workspaces. To learn how to configure data function buttons, refer to Create a data function button in Power BI. Format pane headers stay visible as you scroll (Generally Available) Expanded section headers now remain visible at the top of the Format visual pane as you scroll through their settings. This update helps you keep track of the section you’re editing, especially when a section contains many formatting options. For example, when you scroll through color settings, the Colors and Data colors headers remain visible for context. To learn more about formatting visuals, refer to Get started formatting report visualizations. Pick the axis initial scroll position (Generally Available) Categorical axes—like month, year, or product name—show a scrollbar when there are more categories than fit in the visual. Until now, the scrollbar always started at the beginning of the data, so the oldest values displayed first. This month, you can set Initial scroll position to End on the axis Layout section, and the visual loads with the most recent data in view. Users can still scroll back to see earlier history. The option is available on stacked, clustered, and 100% stacked bar and column charts; line, area, stacked area, and 100% stacked area charts; line and stacked column and line and clustered column charts; ribbon, waterfall, and scatter charts with a categorical X-axis. Initial scroll positionset toEndon the X-axis. The scrollbar is positioned on the right, showing the most recent months first. To learn more, refer to the Customize x-axis and y-axis properties documentation. Azure Maps geocoding improvements (Generally Available) Large reference layers now render correctly when you filter your report. Reference layers add geographic context using points, lines, and polygons, such as locations, routes, postal codes, sales territories, and administrative regions. The Azure Maps visual renders up to 30,000 reference-layer features at a time. Previously, when a reference layer exceeded this limit, features excluded from the initial view could remain missing even after a report filter narrowed the data to a smaller area. . . . Now, Azure Maps re-evaluates the reference-layer features whenever report filters are applied. The unfiltered view is still limited to 30,000 features, but a filtered view accurately displays the relevant features, up to that limit. On-object interaction improvements (Preview) Based on your feedback during preview, we're introducing the first in a series of on-object interaction improvements, designed to make quick edits to your visuals easier. This month we're refining how you add data and manage some visual elements. The Build flyout now opens only when you select Add data, helping you stay focused when dragging and dropping data directly onto a visual or into the Build pane. We’ve also separated Title and Subtitle in the Add to your visual flyout, so you can manage them independently. In addition, title and subtitle are now turned off by default for matrix, table, and card visuals in reports that use the latest base theme. New reports automatically use the latest base theme. For existing reports, select Update theme in the Theme pane to apply this change. You can turn either element back on when needed. to your visual menu. To learn more, refer to the using on-object interaction with visuals and updating to the latest base theme documentation. Support for Fabric Apps in Org apps (Coming Soon) Soon, users will be able to include generative Fabric Apps alongside the reports, dashboards, notebooks, and other content in your Org Apps. For example, imagine you want people to rate the content in an Org App and share feedback about what would make it more useful. You can create a Fabric App for that experience and add it directly to the Org App. Whether you’re helping people explore what could happen next, act on an insight, or complete a specialized workflow, Fabric Apps give you a flexible new way to build for your audience without sending them somewhere else. Together, organizational apps and Fabric Apps provide a way to bring enterprise reporting, content, and tailored experiences together for your organization. Learn more about org apps and item types supported, including Fabric Apps. Changes to Power BI subscription email delivery Power BI is updating the platform used to deliver subscription emails as part of ongoing improvements to delivery reliability and long-term service health. As eligible subscriptions move to the updated platform, customers may notice changes to the sender identity and email formatting. Each subscription transfers automatically when it moves. Customers do not need to recreate it or change its schedule or recipients. After selecting Subscribe for an item, an information icon identifies a subscription that has moved to the updated email delivery platform. Learn more about changes to Power BI subscription emails. Increased Export to Excel row limits (Generally Available) Many users export Power BI data to Excel for further analysis. This month, we're increasing the maximum number of rows that can be exported from table visuals using Data with current layout from 150,000 to 500,000. This increase helps you analyze larger datasets in Excel with fewer export operations. s. To learn more about exporting data from Power BI visuals, refer to Export data from a Power BI visualization. Value selection in Narrative visual We are replacing the Q&A natural language experience for creating dynamic values in the Narrative visual and text box with a more deterministic UI. This is due to the ongoing deprecation of the Q&A tool, and also based on feedback that it was hard to deterministically pick exact values through the Q&A experience. Authors can now create and edit custom values through a direct, deterministic UI: select a column or measure, apply any valid summarization, and add any type of filter. Auto-generated values are unchanged, and values previously authored with Q&A remain available as read-only. To learn more, refer to the Create Smart Narrative documentation. Modeling Create and edit DirectQuery semantic models in the Power BI service DirectQuery semantic models can now be created and edited directly in the Power BI service, eliminating the need to download and use Power BI Desktop. Previously, building models that query data sources in real time meant downloading Desktop, authoring the model, and publishing it to the web. Now, web-based modeling gives your team the freedom to: Work from any device: Mac, Linux and Windows users can now author DirectQuery models straight from the browser. Collaborate in real time: Multiple team members can work on the same semantic model simultaneously. Ditch the desktop loop: Skip the download-edit-republish cycle and update your models instantly in the service. Capabilities on the web Start from scratch: Connect to a supported data source and choose DirectQuery mode. Figure: Power Query interface displaying data source connection settings, with DirectQuery selected as the data connectivity mode. Full modeling control: Open existing DirectQuery models to manage relationships, write DAX and tweak table/column properties. : Model View in Power BI Service showing tables, relationships, and the properties panel for editing a DirectQuery semantic model. Flexible storage modes: Easily switch table storage modes from DirectQuery to Import or Dual if needed. : Properties pane that allows user to switch table storage modes from DirectQuery to Import or Dual. Thanks to this new capability, composite models are also available on the web! Head to the Power BI service and open one of your DirectQuery semantic models or create a brand-new one. We'd love to hear what you think! Learn more in the DirectQuery documentation. Approximate Distinct Count comes to Import and Direct Lake (Preview) Distinct count is one of the most resource-intensive operations in any analytical engine. As data cardinality grows, so do CPU and memory usage, often slowing down your interactive reports. APPROXIMATEDISTINCTCOUNT already offered a faster alternative for DirectQuery sources such as Azure SQL, Synapse, BigQuery, Databricks, and Snowflake. This month we're extending support to Import, Direct Lake on OneLake, and Direct Lake on SQL semantic models. DAX = APPROXIMATEDISTINCTCOUNT(<columnName>) : Model View in Power BI Service showing tables, relationships, and the properties panel for editing a DirectQuery semantic model. How it works and when to use it Instead of scanning every single unique value, APPROXIMATEDISTINCTCOUNT calculates a highly accurate estimate of unique values with a standard error rate of ~1.6%. In return, you get faster query execution times. Best for high-cardinality columns: Use it on columns with millions of unique values (such as transaction IDs, user IDs, or timestamps) where an approximate result can reduce the resources required to calculate distinct values. Keep standard DISTINCTCOUNT for low-cardinality data: Stick to exact counts for smaller attributes like Country, Category, or Status, where standard calculation is already fast, or for financial metrics where absolute precision is required. Swap APPROXIMATEDISTINCTCOUNT into your heaviest measures today and let us know how much speed you gain on your models! Learn more in the APPROXIMATEDISTINCTCOUNT documentation. Accelerate text searches in your semantic models with String Indexing (Preview) String Indexing for Power BI semantic models is coming soon! If your reports rely heavily on text fields, such as product names, customer comments, or long descriptions, you’ve likely faced slow performance when users search or filter on large semantic models. String Indexing is designed to improve text-search performance in supported semantic models. Why String Indexing? Common text operations like DAX functions (SEARCH(), CONTAINSSTRING()) and advanced text slicers in reports traditionally scan data row-by-row. As datasets grow, these scans slow down query times. String Indexing builds specialized indexes so the engine can locate matching text more efficiently, which can improve report responsiveness for both Import and Direct Lake semantic models. Indexing modes You can configure String Indexing via model metadata to fit your workload needs: Auto Mode: Automatically builds the index on the first query execution for a qualifying column. The index does not persist in storage; it remains in memory only while the column is loaded and will be rebuilt on subsequent queries if evicted. Ideal for smaller models. Full Mode: Builds and persists the index during scheduled data refreshes. While refresh times and model size may slightly increase, users enjoy consistently fast query performance right out of the box. Get started String Indexing requires a semantic model running at 1707 compatibility level. During this initial preview phase, indexing can be configured through TMDL on the web or XMLA metadata. Desktop support and a dedicated UI experience within Power BI are planned for a future release to simplify setup. Check out the String Indexing documentation for setting up instructions, prerequisites, and guidance on choosing the right indexing mode for your models. We look forward to seeing how this feature helps make text-heavy reporting experiences faster and more responsive! Introducing Full-Text Search in Power BI Semantic Models (Preview) Full-Text Indexing for Power BI semantic models is coming soon! While traditional string searches look for exact character matches, Full-Text Indexing enables a more intelligent search experience based on the meaning of words and natural language concepts. This capability powers two new DAX functions, TEXTCONTAINS() and TEXTSIMILARITY(), making it easier than ever to analyze large volumes of textual data directly in your semantic models. Why Full-Text Indexing? Business data increasingly contains rich text content such as customer feedback, support tickets, product descriptions, incident summaries, and knowledge articles. Searching this data using traditional string matching often requires exact matches and can miss relevant results due to differences in spelling, word forms, or phrasing. Full-Text Indexing builds a specialized search index at the column level, allowing semantic models to understand words rather than just character sequences. This enables advanced search experiences such as: Finding related words through linguistic analysis (for example, run, running, and runs) Matching singular and plural variations automatically Ignoring common stop words such as "the" or "and" Supporting phrase-based searches Tolerating minor spelling mistakes through fuzzy matching Enabling semantic similarity search scenarios Getting Started FTS Indexing requires a semantic model running at 1708 compatibility level. During this initial preview phase, indexing can be configured through TMDL on the web or XMLA metadata. Desktop support and a dedicated UI experience within Power BI are planned for a future release to simplify setup. New DAX functions Full-Text Indexing is required for two new DAX functions: TEXTCONTAINS() Returns TRUE when a text value matches a search expression using full-text search semantics rather than simple substring matching. It supports multiple search modes, including keyword matching, phrase matching, and fuzzy matching for typo tolerance TextContains(<WithinTextColumn>, <SearchText>, [MatchMode]) Example: "Show me all reviews that mention spa." The review either matches or it doesn't. TEXTSIMILARITY() Returns a relevance score indicating how well the text in <WithinTextColumn> matches <SearchText>. It enables similarity-based text comparisons, helping identify records that are semantically related even when they do not contain the exact same words. TextSimilarity(<WithinTextColumn>, <SearchText> [, <MatchMode>]) Example: "Show me the 10 reviews most relevant to 'good breakfast'." Reviews mentioning both terms prominently rank higher than reviews that only partially match. Learn more about these two new DAX functions (TEXTCONTAINS, TEXTSIMILARITY) in our documentation. Full-Text Indexing is supported for both Import and Direct Lake models, with Full mode recommended (during Preview) for the best out-of-the-box performance and user experience. Refer to the Full Text Indexing documentation to learn more about prerequisites, configuration options, and setup instructions. Data connectivity New Power Query editor (Preview) Since May of this year, the modern Get Data experience has been available in preview inside Power BI Desktop; the feedback we've gathered from that rollout has directly shaped what comes next. Your reports of friction points, missing capabilities, and rough edges between the legacy and modern interfaces went straight into the backlog, and this month that work pays off: the full modern Power Query Editor experience moves into preview. It's the same trusted engine, wrapped in a completely refreshed editing surface — and we're still closing the remaining gaps with the legacy UI as we go. Let's explore six key reasons to enable and try this feature. Modern Get Data - The same connector browsing and search experience you already know from Fabric Dataflow Gen2 — now in Desktop. Searchable, categorized, and designed to make connectors easier to find and navigate than the legacy dialog. Try it: Connect to a new data source and browse the OneLake catalog. To learn more, refer to the Data sources in Power BI Desktop documentation. Dark theme, end to end - No more jarring light-mode panes breaking your flow. The legacy editor only partially supported dark theme. The modern editor applies it consistently across the preview grid, dialogs, and other parts of the editing surface. Folding visibility - Stop guessing whether your query folds. Step folding indicators mark each step as folding or not, and the new query plan shows exactly how the engine intends to evaluate your query — and where folding breaks down. Try it: Open the query plan on a query with several steps and find where folding stops. To learn more, refer to the Understanding Query Evaluation and Query Folding in Power Query documentation. Diagram view - See how your queries relate to each other visually, instead of reverse-engineering it from names. A gamechanger for files you've inherited or models with long reference/merge chains. Try it: Open a file with referenced queries and trace a merge visually. To learn more, refer to the Diagram view documentation. New capabilities, now on Desktop - Features that used to live only on the web are now here: rank column, cluster values, schema view, query script view, plus upgrades to transforms you already use daily. Try it: Add a rank column or cluster values on a messy text column. To learn more, refer to the Rank column and Use Schema View documentation. Export a Power Query template - Capture your solution at a point in time and take it with you. Export a template from Desktop and import it straight into a Dataflow Gen2 — queries, steps, and structure intact. Try it: Export a template from a multi-query file and import it into a Dataflow Gen2 to compare. Figure: Screenshot of the Export template experience in the Power Query editor. To learn more, refer to the Power Query template documentation. Ready to try it? Enabling the modern Power Query experience takes just a few seconds — no restart required: Open Power BI Desktop. Locate: File > Options and settings > Options. Under Preview features, check New Power Query experience. Open (or reopen) the Power Query Editor — you're now in the modern experience. Once you've had a chance to explore this new user interface and its experiences, we want to hear from you. Share your thoughts on the new Power Query experience in the Fabric Community — what's working, what's missing, and what would make it a compelling alternative from the legacy editor. Every comment helps shape what ships next. Microsoft Outlook Mail connector (Preview) We're introducing the new Microsoft Outlook Mail connector (Preview) for Power BI Desktop. Built on the Microsoft Graph API, it lets you read your mailbox data — folders, messages, and attachments — using an organizational account. This is the first in a set of new connectors we'll be releasing as a modern alternative to the Exchange Online connector. The initial preview is scoped to Mail in Power BI Desktop. Additional connectors for Calendar Events, Contacts, and Tasks are on the roadmap, along with Excel and Power BI service / Fabric Dataflows Gen2 support. Scheduled refresh isn't supported yet — this applies to both the Power BI service and refreshes routed through the on-premises data gateway. To try it, enable the Microsoft Outlook Mail preview feature under Options in Power BI Desktop, then open Get Data → Online Services → Microsoft Outlook Mail and sign in with your organizational account. To learn more, refer to the Microsoft Outlook Mail connector documentation. More flexible Data Privacy Firewall query patterns in Power BI Desktop (Preview) Power BI Desktop now allows Data Privacy Firewall partitions that reference other partitions also access data sources when the privacy levels of the involved data sources are compatible. Introduced in the July 2026 release and enabled by default, this preview setting aligns Power BI Desktop with Power Query Online, gateways, and the Power BI service. This change supports common query patterns in which one query returns a value that another query uses to build a web request, SQL statement, file path, or other data source request. These patterns can now run without refactoring queries or duplicating logic solely to satisfy the previous partition restriction. The Data Privacy Firewall remains active. Power Query continues to evaluate the privacy levels of the involved data sources before combining data, helping authors use more flexible query designs while preserving privacy protections. To learn more, refer to the Allow data privacy firewall partitions that reference other partitions to also access data sources documentation. Mobile Mobile page indicator (Generally Available) Know immediately which report pages are mobile-ready, without clicking through them. Each page that has a mobile layout shows an icon on its page tab in the footer, so you can spot your mobile coverage instantly. Pages without a mobile layout stay unmarked, making it easy to see what's left to optimize. The icon is coming soon to both Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service. In Power BI Desktop, it appears in both desktop layout view and mobile layout view, so you can track mobile coverage right where you work. In the Power BI service, it appears in mobile layout view. Page tabs marked with an icon to show which pages have a mobile layout. To learn how to build mobile-optimized reports, refer to the Mobile-optimized Power BI reports overview documentation. Contact details in Info drawer (Generally Available) We’re making it easier to connect with the right people from the Power BI Mobile app. You can now find contact details in the Info drawer for reports, apps, and dashboards, and email the relevant contact directly from your phone. To learn more about Power BI in mobile, refer to the What Are the Power BI Mobile Apps? documentation. Developers and APIs Power BI Projects (PBIP) (Generally Available) Since entering preview in 2023, PBIP has changed how developers build and manage Power BI content. It stores report and semantic model definitions as human-readable text files, turning a Power BI solution into a codebase. Developers can search these files, track changes in Git, review diffs in pull requests, automate updates with scripts and pipelines, and use AI agents to work with models and reports. Changes remain visible and reversible, which makes team development easier and safer. Recent improvements have made the workflow more practical. These include opening a project directly in Visual Studio Code and detecting external file changes in Power BI Desktop. New underlying formats capabilities: Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) for semantic models. Power BI Enhanced Report Format (PBIR) for reports. PBIR is now the default report format for PBIX and PBIP files. New reports use it from the start. When you edit a report that uses the legacy format, Power BI tools automatically convert it to PBIR. To learn more, refer to the Power BI Projects documentation. New Purge Data option for Fabric APIs The new Purge Data option for Fabric APIs gives developers and administrators greater control over programmatic semantic model deployments. This capability allows users to explicitly approve deployments that may require removing existing data, helping unblock scenarios such as schema or data type changes that previously failed validation checks. Designed with both safety and automation in mind, purgeData keeps data protection safeguards enabled by default while giving developers the flexibility they need to manage complex deployment scenarios at scale. To learn more, refer to the Purge Data documentation. Other Data updated and sensitivity fields of Power BI report in Microsoft Teams preview card (Coming Soon) Power BI report previews in Microsoft Teams will soon surface the report's last refresh date and sensitivity label. These additional signals will help users quickly assess the freshness, relevance, and classification of a report before opening it. To learn how Power BI content is displayed in Microsoft Teams, refer to the Link preview cards in Microsoft Teams chats and channels documentation. Artifact info header for Power BI tabs in Microsoft Teams (Generally Available) Power BI content in Microsoft Teams tabs now includes the artifact info header, giving users the context they need without leaving their flow of work. Available for reports, apps, organizational apps, dashboards, and scorecards, the header brings key artifact information and actions together in one place. The new header displays the artifact name and sensitivity label and provides an entry point to artifact metadata. You can open the artifact in the Power BI personal app in Teams, open it in a browser, and refresh the tab. Tab owners can control their experience with the new Show info header setting on the tab settings page. The setting is 'on’ by default and can be turned off when a more compact tab experience is preferred. To learn how to add Power BI content as a tab in Microsoft Teams, refer to the Embed Power BI reports in Microsoft Teams documentation. Third-party custom visuals graphomate matrix The graphomate matrix is our powerful table visual for Microsoft Power BI, Excel and Power Point. It combines clean data matrix visualization with expandable hierarchies or a crosstab view, and flexible In-Cell data visualizations. Trends can be visualized per row via the sparklines or sparkbars feature, complete with detailed value information on hover. On top of that, our matrix can internally calculate deviations and custom members, condense your data with the N+Rest option, and fully customize the sorting of your dimension members in rows or columns. Columns which are only necessary for internal calculations can be hidden. Column width can be defined precisely or automatically using the available space. It provides the ability to format your matrix according to IBCS® - or now ISO - standards with predefined scenarios for the various datatypes. These scenarios are reflected not only in column headers but also in the In-Cell visualizations, like background bars and deviation charts. You can also define your own scenarios. Complex data driven formatting can be achieved with our implemented script language, which is based on Java Script and can be written with the help of our custom web editor and our available AI Skills. Video Link: graphomate matrix for Microsoft Power BI AppSource: graphomate matrix Our Product Site: graphomate matrix Drill Down Bubble PRO by ZoomCharts Drill Down Bubble PRO is a Power BI visual designed for exploring relationships, trends, and outliers across multiple dimensions of data. It adds richer exploration, selection, and analytical capabilities directly inside the visual. Key features include: Multi-level drill down to explore data hierarchies from a high-level overview to detailed insights. Pan and zoom controls to navigate dense datasets and focus on specific clusters or individual data points. Area and lasso selection to quickly isolate groups of bubbles and use selections for interactive analysis and filtering. Dynamic regression lines that recalculate as the displayed data changes, making trends and relationships easier to identify. Line and area thresholds to highlight targets, ranges, exceptions, or other important business benchmarks. Area shading to visually group and compare selected segments of data. 200+ formatting settings to tailor the chart to different reporting and branding needs. Figure: Drill Down Bubble PRO demonstrates multi-level drill down, panning, and zoom controls for exploring data from high-level patterns to detailed points. These capabilities make Drill Down Bubble PRO especially useful for customer segmentation, sales analysis, portfolio analysis, performance monitoring, and other scenarios where users need to actively explore patterns rather than simply display them. Get on Markeplace Commenting in view mode: introducing Zebra BI Tables+ & Charts+ It's month-end. A regional manager opens the report, spots a variance in their region, and knows exactly why it happened. But the report isn't theirs to edit, so the explanation ends up where it always does: a screenshot pasted into PowerPoint, emailed around, detached from the number that prompted it. That's the collaboration gap. Your report shows what happened; the why and the what next leave the report and get lost. Meet Zebra BI Tables+ and Charts+: two new visuals that keep everything existing Zebra BI Tables and Charts offer and add a built-in collaboration layer. Report viewers can add comments directly on a data point, in view mode, with no Power BI edit access. Each comment is anchored to the exact figure and stored in your own SharePoint file. Zebra BI stores nothing. add contextual comments to individual data points, attach supporting files from SharePoint, and collaborate directly in view mode. So instead of screenshotting insights into PowerPoint or maintaining a custom workaround, the whole team explains and decides right on the report. Instead of slides or emails, the next steps can be defined directly on the spot. Stop losing good decisions to a missing context. Start making them on the report. Try Zebra BI Tables+ and Charts+ free for 14 days on AppSource. Network Graph by Powerviz The Powerviz Network Graph is a visual representation of Nodes and the relationships or connections between them. Its primary purpose is to illustrate how different entities are related or interact with one another. Key Features Line Options: Customise node links with different styles and colors. Node Shape: Choose from various shapes, icons, or upload your own. Labels: Display categories, values, and percentage labels. Data Colors: Access 30+ color palettes, including color-blind-safe options. Fill Patterns: Highlight nodes with patterns or upload your own. Conditional Formatting: Highlight outliers based on measures or category rules. Clusters: Group related nodes to reveal patterns. Relationships: Analyze node connections at a glance. Animation: Add pop-ups and highlight effects. Import/Export: Save and reuse themes easily. Toolbars: Gain advanced control over the graph. Other features included are Sorting, Ranking, Lasso / Reverse Lasso, Grid View and more. Business Use Cases Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Optimization, Social Network Analysis (SNA). Resources Try Network Graph 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 Hierarchical Bar Chart New, exciting changes were made to Hierarchical Bar Chart. Bubble Matrix for stacks - The visual now provides the option to show stacks as bubbles below the bars. Display Stacks as Clustered Columns - From the format pane settings, you can choose to display stacks as clustered column chart. Filter using legends - You can click on a stack legend to filter out other stacks. On mouse hover relevant stack gets highlighted. Stack ribbons and %age of total - You can now choose to connect stacks with ribbon and show percentage of total for each stack. Resources Check out the Hierarchical Bar Chart Update YouTube video. Download the visual from APPSOURCE Download a sample pbix file For more information refer to Hierarchical Bar Chart or contact us. That’s a wrap! The European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference is just getting started, and there's never been a more exciting time to be part of the Power BI community. We hope these updates help you discover new capabilities, streamline your workflows, and get even more value from your data. Be sure to explore the links throughout this post for deeper technical guidance and follow along with the latest announcements and sessions from Barcelona.Power BI January 2026 Feature Summary
The January 2026 Power BI Feature Summary is packed with exciting news—there are fresh updates, important announcements, and some big changes, especially around upcoming events, feature retirements, and the latest in AI and Copilot advancements. Some of the standout features include new reporting tools, smarter data modeling options, enhanced resources for developers, broader global standards support and upgraded visualizations. With these improvements, Power BI is making analytics easier to use, helping you work more efficiently, and connecting all your tools even better than before. FabCon Atlanta is fast approaching! If you’re looking for more details, check out the Events & Announcements section. We hope you’ll join us! Contents Events & Announcements General Deprecation of Power BI Q&A SQL Server Reporting Services Report Viewer Web Part Support Discontinuation The Power BI application is accessible within Teams on Microsoft 365 Operated by 21Vianet Copilot and AI Attach reference to Copilot chat in the Power BI mobile app Updating Prepped for AI setting name to Approved for Copilot Standalone Copilot Access on Power BI Home Reporting Field parameters persist hierarchy level setting Format Pane Improvements Introducing Markers in Azure Maps Visual Modern Visual Tooltips (Generally Available) Column Sizing Update in Tables and Matrices Modeling Updates on Editing Semantic Models in the Power BI Service Chinese coded character set (GB18030-2022) support Developers + API’s Power BI Enhanced Report Format (PBIR) as Default Format Visualizations Funnel Chart by Powerviz Nebula by BI Samurai Events & Announcements Could you be the next Power BI Dataviz World Champion? There’s only one way to find out! By joining this global contest, you will have the opportunity to tackle three weekly challenges designed to stretch visualization skills and inspire innovation. Four finalists will be selected to compete for the title of world champion LIVE on stage at FabCon Atlanta. Learn more about how to enter and view the entries from the first week, happening now. Two months until FabCon – will we see you there? Join us for the ultimate Power BI, Microsoft Fabric SQL, Real-Time Intelligence, AI, and Databases community-led event from March 16-20, 2026, in Atlanta, GA. 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, attendee favorites Power Hour and the Data Viz World Championships live finals, and a can’t-miss attendee party at the Georgia Aquarium. Register with code FABCOMM to save $200. General Deprecation of Power BI Q&A Q&A, our legacy natural language tool, will be deprecated in December 2026. Moving forward, use Power BI Copilot, which provides a more advanced and integrated solution for querying data with natural language. For more details and recommended alternatives, refer to the blog post on Deprecating Power BI Q&A. SQL Server Reporting Services Report Viewer Web Part Support Discontinuation Support for SSRS SharePoint Webpart, a component that allows you to embed on-prem paginated reports directly into SharePoint Server pages, will end on April 13, 2026. While the download will continue to be available, there will be no future updates for this component. For more information and recommended alternatives, refer to SSRS SharePoint Webpart documentation. The Power BI application is accessible within Teams on Microsoft 365 Operated by 21Vianet Users can acquire the Power BI app from the app store, or admins can centrally install it for them. Once added, users can view their Power BI content in Teams using the app, and pin Power BI items to chats or channels using Tabs. The following features are not supported in the Power BI app for Teams operated by 21Vianet environment: Power BI notifications in Microsoft Teams Power BI preview cards Please also refer to the service description of Power BI in 21Vianet: Power BI operated by 21Vianet in China. For installation instructions, please refer to: Add the Power BI app to Microsoft Teams. Copilot and AI Attach reference to Copilot chat in the Power BI mobile app In certain situations, you may know precisely which item you want Copilot to reference when generating its response. For those cases, we added the ability to attach a Report or Semantic model to Copilot chat as a grounded reference. To add a reference, tap the + icon or type / to search and select an item. The selected item appears in the chat Copilot uses it to ground its answers. Updating Prepped for AI setting name to Approved for Copilot In May 2025, we launched the capability to mark a model as prepped for AI. The name of this setting has been updated to “approved for Copilot”. Enabling this setting in a semantic model applies three main functionalities: The standalone Copilot agent doesn’t apply friction treatment to answers from that model. Authors can turn on the admin setting to only show approved items in the standalone Copilot experience. Models marked as approved for AI are boosted in the Copilot search experience. After you prepare your semantic model for AI and it's ready for consumption, you can mark your model Approved for Copilot by following these steps: Navigate to the Power BI service and find your semantic model. Select the Settings icon in the upper left corner. Expand the Approved Copilot section. Select the Approved Copilot box, and then select the Apply button. Standalone Copilot Access on Power BI Home Introducing a new Standalone Copilot entry point right on the Power BI Home page! This update brings Copilot closer to where you start your day, making it faster and easier to jump into AI‑powered insights. Why bring Copilot to Home? Placing Copilot directly on the Home page comes with several benefits: Faster insights - start asking questions the moment you land on Home. Easier discovery - new users see Copilot right away, encouraging them to use it as part of their natural workflow. When does it appear? The new entry point will show up automatically when: Standalone Copilot is enabled by your tenant admin. You have a valid Copilot capacity available. If either requirement isn’t met, don’t worry—you’ll continue to see the classic home experience. Prefer the classic view? You can always switch back to Recommended content using the picker at the top of the Home page. Toggle between the experiences your workflow needs. To learn more, visit: Standalone Copilot experience in Power BI (Preview). Reporting Field parameters persist hierarchy level setting In July 2025, field parameters became generally available, improving how matrices remember their expanded or collapsed state when the field parameter selection changes. Previously, many users found it confusing that a matrix would fully collapse whenever a field parameter value changed. Since the update, however, some users have shared that they preferred the earlier behavior because it felt more familiar and better suited for their workflows. To address this, we've added a new report-level setting that lets you restore the pre-July 2025 behavior for field parameters' expansion and collapse of hierarchy levels. By default, hierarchy levels remain persistent, but you can switch off this feature for a report using the Persist Hierarchy Level setting. The following examples are where to find it: In Power BI Desktop, navigate to Options and settings > Options > Current File > Report settings > Field Parameters > Persist hierarchy level. In Fabric, navigate to the report settings and find Persist hierarchy level under Field parameter options. To illustrate the difference, consider a matrix showing a field parameter called Product Group and a column called Year on the rows, displaying Total sales. The field parameter allows selection of Category, Class, Color, or any combination. In the following example, Category is selected, and the Categories are expanded, so you can see values broken down by Year: Now, when you change the field parameter from Category to Class, what happens depends on the Persist hierarchy level setting. If it's on, the matrix remains expanded, keeping the Year column visible; If it's off, the matrix collapses and displays only values for Class. The following table provides a comparison showing both behaviors based on whether the toggle is enabled or disabled. On Off We greatly value user feedback and continuously strive to improve the experience based on your input. The introduction of the persist hierarchy level setting is a direct result of listening to your suggestions, and we hope this new option enhances your reporting workflows and satisfaction. To learn more about the toggle and its impact, refer to the documentation on Let report readers use field parameters to change visuals. Format Pane Improvements With this version, we are releasing two improvements to Format Pane – Improved Color picker and reset to default experiences. Improved Color Picker Experience in Power BI Power BI report creators can customize colors in visuals with a theme color picker and custom color picker. We have added additional capabilities to this release. A clear indicator for the currently selected theme color. A simple way to reset colors to their default settings. A back button to return from custom colors to theme colors. This enhancement makes color customization more intuitive and efficient, helping you design reports with confidence and ease. Learn more about color formatting your visuals in the Tips and tricks for formatting color in reports documentation. Granular Reset Options in the Format Pane Format pane reset to default quickly let’s report creators undo customizations made to a visual. With this release, you can now reset default with finer control, for a single formatting group in the format pane. This is in addition to the existing functionality of reset to default for the whole visual and each section of the format pane. Reset this group settings to default within each section. Reset group settings without impacting the rest of the section. This enhancement delivers greater flexibility and usability, making it easier to fine-tune your report formatting with confidence. Learn more about formatting visuals in Power BI reports in the Get started formatting report visualizations documentation. Introducing Markers in Azure Maps Visual Azure Maps Visual for Power BI now supports a powerful new capability: Markers. Display your data points using customized icons, varying sizes, and advanced formatting features to improve narrative clarity in geospatial analysis. Replace basic shape markers with icons or custom images to represent deliveries, facilities, or assets using meaningful symbols like trucks, warehouses, or alerts. Scale marker sizes dynamically reflect the data measures such as shipment volume, population density, or sales. Customize colors and transparency for improved contrast and visibility on the map. Use distinct icons for each category, making reports easier to interpret. Learn more about the rich capabilities of Azure maps in Power BI reports in the Get started with Azure Maps Power BI visual documentation. Modern Visual Tooltips (Generally Available) Modern visual tooltips introduces enhanced usability, accessibility, and interactivity to your reports. These tooltips offer new capabilities in Power BI reports. Drill actions: The new Actions footer lets users drill down, drill up, or drill through data points directly from the tooltip—no need to use the right-click menu or visual header. This streamlines navigation and makes exploring data more intuitive. Styling: Tooltips automatically match your report’s theme colors, with options to further customize background, text, and icon colors in both the theme and Format pane. New reports get updated styling and the Actions footer by default. Existing reports keep their previous customizations, and you can enable or disable the Actions footer anytime via the Format pane. Modern visual tooltips in Power BI reports enhance usability and interactivity by allowing users to drill down, up, or through data directly from the tooltip Actions footer. These tooltips automatically adopt report theme colors, offer customization options, and provide updated styling by default for new reports, with flexibility to enable or disable the Actions footer as needed in the Format pane. To learn more, refer to the Create Visual Tooltips documentation. Column Sizing Update in Tables and Matrices In previous releases, table and matrix visuals automatically expanded their columns to fill the available space. This feature was introduced for tables in October 2025 and for matrices in November 2025. You gave us feedback that this often meant that even small fields stretched wider than necessary, creating layouts that felt inconsistent or wasted screen real estate. With this month’s release, that behavior has changed. In reports created from this release onward, columns are once again sized by default based on the content they contain. This makes tables and matrices more compact, easier to read, and better aligned with the actual data. You can still manually adjust column widths, or use Grow to Fit to expand columns when needed. But by default, visuals now prioritize content-driven sizing, giving you cleaner and more predictable layouts right out of the box. Here’s a before and after of the defaults: Before After We want to thank everyone who provided feedback. We greatly appreciate it! To learn more, refer to the documentation on adjusting column width in the table and matrix. Modeling Updates on Editing Semantic Models in the Power BI Service In September 2025, we announced the General Availability of editing semantic models in the Power BI Service. Models configured with incremental refresh are now supported, eliminating the prior restriction that prevented these models from being opened in the service. You can now seamlessly open and edit these models directly into the Power BI Service. However, note that semantic models with incremental refresh still cannot be downloaded as PBIX files, and you cannot use the Power Query editor when editing these models in the web experience. To learn more about editing semantic models in the service, refer to the Edit semantic models in the Power BI service documentation. Chinese coded character set (GB18030-2022) support China’s GB18030‑2022 standard is the latest update to the national character set requirements. It ensures compatibility with Unicode 11.0 and mandates support for additional characters, including minority scripts and emoji. For organizations operating in or with China, compliance is not optional. Rather, it’s a regulatory requirement. Starting with this release, Power BI can be configured to respect GB18030‑2022 encoding using the UnicodeCharacterBehavior setting. This setting is set to CodeUnits by default. To ensure your model is compatible with GB18030-2022, you’ll need to execute a specific XMLA command to set UnicodeCharacterBehavior to CodePoints: <Alter AllowCreate="true" ObjectExpansion="ObjectProperties" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"> <Object> <DatabaseID>[your database id]</DatabaseID> </Object> <ObjectDefinition> <Database ....> <ID>[your model id]</ID> <Name>[your model name]</Name> <Language>[your language code]</Language> <ddl200:CompatibilityLevel>[your model compatibility level]</ddl200:CompatibilityLevel> <ddl200_200:StorageEngineUsed>[your storage engine]</ddl200_200:StorageEngineUsed> <UnicodeCharacterBehavior xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2025/engine/924/924">CodePoints</UnicodeCharacterBehavior> ... </Database> </ObjectDefinition> </Alter> Adding GB18030‑2022 support in Power BI isn’t just a technical tweak; it’s a compliance safeguard and a way to ensure your reports remain globally accessible. With the above XMLA command, you can align your semantic models with modern encoding standards and avoid downstream issues in multilingual environments. The UnicodeCharacterBehavior influences any DAX function that determines the length of a text string, which include FIND, LEFT, LEN, MID, REPLACE, RIGHT. These functions will exhibit different behaviors when working with text strings that contain Unicode characters. Let's look at how this works in practice. Here’s a measure that uses LEN to calculate the length of a text string: StringLength = LEN ( SELECTEDVALUE ( 'Table'[Column1] ) ) Here’s a before and after comparison of the result of StringLength on a column that contains Unicode characters: UnicodeCharacterBehavior = CodeUnits (default) UnicodeCharacterBehavior = CodePoints Notice how on the left each Unicode character has length 2, where on the right, each Unicode character has length 1. To learn more, refer to the documentation. Developers + API’s Power BI Enhanced Report Format (PBIR) as Default Format In November 2025, we announced PBIR will become the default Power BI Report Format for both PBIX and PBIP files (For PBIX users, switching to the PBIR report format does not impact their experience). PBIR will be activated by default in the Power BI service as part of a phased rollout, with full availability anticipated by the end of February. Beginning with the March release, PBIR will be set as the default format in Power BI Desktop. PBIR is currently in Preview with an opt-out option. Switching to PBIR is the last step before its General Availability, planned for Q3 2026. Any issues found now will be prioritized and addressed. Any issues identified during this period will be prioritized and addressed by our support team. We recommend preparing for this transition ahead of GA, as PBIR will be the only supported report format once it becomes generally available. Visualizations Funnel Chart by Powerviz The Funnel Chart by Powerviz is a stunning and informative visualization. It has 4 chart types in 1 visual, including a pyramid chart. The Power BI-certified visual is useful for tracking progress through different stages. It can also group data with legends for detailed insights. Key Features: Funnel Settings: Multiple display types are available, including vertical and horizontal orientation. Data Colors: Offers 7 schemes and 30+ color palettes. Labels: Select from multiple display styles with a custom label option included. Conversion Rate: In a single click measure the percentage of top and bottom stages to identify bottlenecks. Fill Patterns: Highlight stages with custom or pre-filled patterns. Conditional Formatting: Create rules based on measure or category rules. Totals: Display the total value at the top or bottom of the funnel chart. Ranking: Filter out Top/Bottom N stages. Annotation: Create multiple stories from one visual with comments for easy collaboration and clarity. Many other features included are grid view, show condition, and accessibility support. Business Use Cases: Sales Funnel Analysis, Marketing Campaigns, User Onboarding, & Website Traffic Try Funnel Chart 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 Nebula by BI Samurai Nebula by BI Samurai is a free certified Power BI custom visual for layout and background design, helping you create structured, consistent, and visually polished report pages—directly inside Power BI. Nebula simplifies report design by letting you build layouts that guide user attention, improve readability, and enhance storytelling—without using external design tools. Key Features: Customizable shapes – create precise layouts and background sections. Flexible color and transparency controls – match your report’s theme perfectly. Layer control – easily arrange and reorder elements. Custom default styles – set your own shape presets once and apply them easily across multiple pages. Lightweight and performance-optimized – designed to keep reports fast and responsive. Whether you're a designer or analyst, Nebula helps you transform plain Power BI pages into professional-looking, structured dashboards that communicate clearly and consistently. Microsoft Certified and available on AppSource, Nebula meets Microsoft’s standards for security, quality, and reliability. Learn more and explore design examples at bisamurai.com/nebula. Download Nebula from the AppSource: Nebula by BI Samurai. Check our Nebula demo video. 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 look forward to hearing from you!
Power BI Desktop Bridge (Preview)
Power BI Desktop Bridge (Preview) Power BI Desktop Bridge introduces a new way of working, allowing external applications and agents to interact directly with Power BI Desktop! What is Power BI Desktop Bridge? The bridge is a lightweight local server that lets external applications interact directly with Power BI Desktop. Think of it as a direct, secure channel between your tools and Power BI Desktop. Your agents, scripts, and external applications can now: Check the current state of your report. Trigger key actions, like reloading files after edits. Capture screenshots to validate changes. Iterate and improve in real time, without manual handoffs. The following core capabilities are available through the bridge: Discover What's Available Method: bridge.manifest Capabilities: Returns a complete list of all capabilities and their specifications. Think of this as a "menu" of what your version of Desktop can do. Always check this first to see what's available. Check Report State Method: application.state.get/v1 Capabilities: Returns information about the currently open file and whether there are unsaved changes. In plain language: Know which file is open and if there are pending edits. Essential before running automation that might affect your work. Capture Report Snapshots Method: report.snapshot.capture/v1 Capabilities: Captures a PNG screenshot of a specific report page at any resolution you want. In plain language: See exactly how your report looks right now. Perfect for validating changes visually or sharing proof of work. Reload files from Disk Method: file.reload/v1 Capabilities: Reloads the open PBIP/PBIR file from disk to pick up on-disk edits. In plain language: After making changes to report files, refresh Desktop to see them. You can control whether the semantic model is also reloaded. Why this is a big step for agents? Before the bridge, agents could be incredibly smart about generating code and automating repetitive tasks. But they hit a wall: they couldn't talk directly to Power BI Desktop. They couldn't reload files to see changes in real time. They couldn't capture screenshots to validate what they'd built. They were flying blind. Now, with the bridge, that changes completely, agents can: Read the current report state. Edit report files directly on disk. Reload to see changes instantly in Desktop. Validate with a live screenshot. Iterate immediately—observing, learning, and improving. Ready to see this in action? The Report Authoring Skill is a perfect example. It leverages the bridge to read state, make edits, reload instantly, validate visually with screenshots, and iterate continuously in one seamless loop. Now, reports that would take hours to build, debug, and refine manually can now be authored, validated, and polished by agents in minutes. But this is just the beginning. The bridge opens the door for you to build the custom solutions you need. How to get started Desktop Bridge is enabled by default. To disable or enable it: Open Power BI Desktop. Go to File > Options and settings > Options. Open Preview features. Enable external tool access to Power BI Desktop through secure local APIs. Start using the Desktop Bridge The easiest way to start is with the Power BI Desktop Bridge CLI. It lets you leverage the bridge in a simple, practical way, without building custom integrations first. Built on top of the bridge, it includes a set of intuitive commands ready to use. The reload command is a great example. If you are making external changes to your PBIR files, you can simply run: powerbi-desktop reload This command reloads your on-disk changes in Power BI Desktop through the bridge, so you can keep iterating without closing and reopening Desktop. The following are other useful commands at your fingertips: # See what the bridge can do powerbi-desktop manifest # Check which Desktop instances are running powerbi-desktop status # Reload after making edits powerbi-desktop reload # Capture screenshots of every report page powerbi-desktop screenshot-all Ready to try it? The Desktop Bridge is here, and it's ready to transform how you work with Power BI Desktop. Stop waiting for manual steps. Start automating. Get started now: Power BI Desktop Bridge.Accelerating Embedded Analytics for Your Application
We are delighted to announce the availability of embedded analytics accelerators developed by our partners. These accelerators significantly shorten the time-to-market for self-service analytics experiences that are integrated into customer-facing applications. Power BI supports multiple embedding scenarios, offering rich functionality. The "Embedding for your customers" scenario offers the highest degree of authentication and authorization flexibility for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). This scenario enables ISVs to keep their existing end-user authentication provider while facilitating customized access control for Power BI items and a highly scalable multitenant implementation. However, leveraging this flexibility involves writing code to utilize the comprehensive Power BI APIs, both to develop the desired front-end user experiences and to create the back-end modules that supports these experiences. Designed for ISVs and enterprises with similar needs, the new partner accelerators deliver a personalized user experience straight out of the box while simplifying the implementation process. They either eliminate the need for coding or significantly reduce the coding effort by providing back-end and admin modules, allowing for a focus on the custom implementation of the application's front-end embedded analytics experiences. These accelerators can be easily purchased and self-deployed from the Azure Marketplace into your Azure environment, making use of your Microsoft Fabric service tenant with Power BI workload. Developed by our partners following product group best practices and guidance, these accelerators offer scalable multitenancy and a comprehensive range of ready-to-use functionalities, customization and integration options designed to meet a variety of customer needs. Find out the details about these accelerators from our partners by exploring the following resources: Embedded analytics solution accelerators from Microsoft partners - An overview and schematic architecture, including links to the accelerators' Azure Marketplace offerings. Microsoft Partner Showcase - Embedded Analytics Solution Accelerators - Interview recordings that describe each accelerator and the associated partner program. If you are attending the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, we invite you to join us for the session: "Accelerate Fabric Embedded Analytics for Your Applications." In this session, we will delve into and discuss the details of the accelerators and the program that facilitated our collaboration with these partners.
Announcing a new admin API to get insights into tenant setting overrides at capacity level.
Introduction In May 2023, Microsoft introduced Fabric, an all-in-one analytics solution for enterprises that covers everything from data movement to data science, Real-Time Analytics, and business intelligence. Microsoft Fabric brings together new and existing components from Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Azure Data Factory into a single integrated environment. These new experiences are managed by a tenant setting that is automatically delegated to capacities. As capacity administrators gained the ability to turn them on or off according to the business needs, tenant admins requested for visibility into overrides made at the capacity level. Today, we are pleased to announce a solution that addresses this concern faced by tenant administrators. Say hello to the "GetCapacityTenantSettingOverrides" API, that helps Fabric tenant admins to gain insight into capacity level overrides. This API can be used to query any tenant setting that may become delegable to the capacity level in the future. Benefits Increased visibility and Security: Tenant admins can use the API to get a complete view of all capacities where the Fabric tenant setting has been overridden. Improved troubleshooting: Tenant admins can use the API to troubleshoot any issues related to the Fabric tenant setting. For example, if a tenant admin gets an incident reporting that the users are unable to create Fabric for a specific capacity, they can use the API to determine whether the tenant setting has been overridden for that capacity. How It Works? To call the API, users need to have administrator rights (such as ) or authenticate using a service principle with Tenant.Read.All or Tenant.ReadWrite.All scope. The API endpoint is: https://api.fabric.microsoft.com/v1/admin/capacities/delegatedTenantSettingOverrides The API response is a JSON object that contains a list of tenant-setting overrides, for each capacity identifiable using the capacity ID. Each tenant setting override will provide information such setting name, title, value, description, security group configuration. This API supports pagination. It returns 1000 records in a page and when the response exceeds 10000 records, the response will have a continuation that could be used for subsequent calls until all records are fetched. Here is a sample response: Where can I learn more about the new API? You can find more details about the new API in the official documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/fabric/admin/tenants/get-capacities-tenant-settings-overrides-(preview) Conclusion We value your feedback and are committed to providing solutions that directly address the challenges faced by our users. The "GetCapacityTenantSettingOverrides" API is a response to the concerns raised by tenant administrators. It offers transparency and insight that administrators need to govern Fabric. As we make more tenant-level settings delegable to domains and workspaces, we will enhance this API to get insights into domain and workspace level overrides. As Fabric continues to evolve, our focus remains on empowering you with tools and insights that simplify your journey through the ever-changing landscape of data analytics. Please continue to send us feedback for what new capabilities you’d like to see in the future.
Troubleshooting automatic aggregations to optimize DirectQuery performance
With the click of a mouse button, dataset creators of any skill level can improve the query performance of their DirectQuery datasets! In the Power BI portal, display the settings for a DirectQuery dataset, expand the Scheduled refresh and performance optimization section, and toggle the Automatic aggregations training option to On, as in the following screenshot, and don’t forget to configure a data refresh schedule to update your aggregations on a regular basis. That's basically all it takes. For more information about how automatic aggregations can help to improve the performance of your report visualizations, see the Automatic Aggregations Overview in the product documentation. Sometimes, however, when you enable automatic aggregations (auto aggs), you end up with no aggregations and no corresponding performance gains. In these troubled situations, it can be helpful to have more control over the auto aggs process than the user interface provides. Granular control lets you fine-tune auto aggs. You can exclude specific tables by setting a minimum size limit below which you don’t want to generate auto aggs. Or maybe you want to test auto-aggs training with different configuration settings and verify that Power BI indeed added auto aggs to your dataset. The Tabular Object Model (TOM) and the Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL) give you the advanced options to cover these scenarios, as explained in this article. If you are a BI developer and want to follow the .NET Core console application used in this article in your own environment, refer to the attached TOM sample code [attachment=1] for details. Make sure you use the latest Analysis Services client libraries and host your dataset on a Premium or Fabric capacity with XMLA Read/Write enabled. If you prefer to work with TMSL instead, keep your SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) installation at the latest version. And if you are not a BI developer, you still might find the following troubleshooting guidance useful. So, let's quickly review how automatic aggregations work before diving deeper into various scenarios and code snippets. For auto aggs to work, you must accomplish the following three essential tasks: Generate DAX queries. You need to use reports or other means to query your dataset because the process of generating automatic aggregations relies on a query log that tracks the queries sent to the dataset over seven days. As the diagram below illustrates, the query log serves as input for auto aggs training. So, as a prerequisite to generating auto aggs, make sure you seed the query log! Perform automatic aggregations training. Auto-aggs training is the process that generates the system-managed aggs tables in the dataset. This process analyzes the query log as well as the cardinality and other characteristics of the source table columns. This process typically runs at dataset refresh time during the first refresh of the day, but you can also trigger auto-aggs training manually and programmatically. Run a data refresh. Keep in mind that auto-aggs training only generates the aggs tables and adds them to the dataset, but it does not fill these tables with data. Loading the aggs data is the job of data refresh, so do not forget to refresh your dataset and configure scheduled refresh to keep the aggs data updated. Only then will you see a query perf improvement for eligible DirectQuery tables. With the basics covered, let’s now dive into a common troubleshooting scenario: You enabled auto aggs, but you don’t notice any perf gains. In this situation, a good first step is to check that you actually have aggs tables in your dataset. Perhaps Power BI didn’t generate any because there just wasn’t any meaningful input data in the query log, or perhaps the dataset hasn’t been refreshed yet so training never ran, or perhaps training didn’t finish within the time limit of 1 hour, which means training hasn’t completed yet and will resume the next day. Auto aggs training can take a long time depending on how fast the data source can process the cardinality queries and other queries that Power BI generates during the training phase. Whatever the reason, if there aren’t any aggs tables in the dataset, your DAX queries can’t leverage aggregations, of course. Aggs tables are relatively easy to spot in SSMS. Connect to your workspace, expand your DirectQuery dataset, and look for tables with GUIDs as their names. The following screenshot shows one such aggs table named b83b1a0c-5712-4f35-8d73-d1db0a0c6c33. After scripting out this table, you can see that it is a hidden system-managed table with an inferred partition source. In managed code using TOM, it’s equally uncomplicated to check for aggs tables. See the following code snippet. As mentioned earlier, the TOM sample code [attachment=2] is attached to this article. /// Check if there are any auto aggs tables, /// i.e. system-managed tables with an inferred partition source. var model = database.Model; if (model.Tables.Where(t => t.SystemManaged && t.Partitions.All(x => x.SourceType == PartitionSourceType.Inferred)).Any()) { Console.WriteLine("This dataset has auto aggs tables!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("This dataset does not have any auto aggs tables!"); } Let’s continue our troubleshooting journey and assume the dataset has no auto-aggs tables yet. A logical next question could be if auto aggs are enabled at all. Now, you might be tempted to look for auto-aggs settings in the dataset. For example, you could check the AutomaticAggregationOptions property of the Model object. Yet, note that Power BI does not store its auto-aggs settings in the model metadata. The following screenshot illustrates this aspect. The dataset owner enabled auto aggs in Power BI, but there are no AutomaticAggregationOptions in the model. The auto-aggs settings that Power BI uses are only available on the dataset settings page. So, what’s the purpose of the AutomaticAggregationOptions property if Power BI doesn’t use it? Its purpose is to store a default auto-aggs configuration that you can apply programmatically to auto-aggs training by using the ApplyAutomaticAggregations method. Power BI doesn’t use this property, but custom solutions can. Instead of using a default auto-aggs configuration, you can also provide an explicit AutomaticAggregationOptions object as an input parameter to the ApplyAutomaticAggregations method. This is the method Power BI uses to submit its own configuration settings. And this is the method that lets you easily and quickly trigger auto-aggs training with different configuration settings as well. The following snippet code illustrates this approach. Refer to the AutomaticAggregationOptions Class in the API documentation for details about supported properties, such as QueryCoverage, DetailTableMinRows, and AggregationTableSizeLimit. /// Perform auto aggs training using a one-off configuration. /// model.ApplyAutomaticAggregations( new AutomaticAggregationOptions { QueryCoverage = 0.5 }); database.Update(Microsoft.AnalysisServices.UpdateOptions.ExpandFull); Calling the above ApplyAutomaticAggregations method is all it takes to trigger auto-aggs training. Perhaps training never ran before. Yet, don’t forget the database Update call to persist any generated aggs tables in the dataset. Still, even a successful completion of the ApplyAutomaticAggregations method is no guarantee that auto-aggs training indeed generated aggs tables. As mentioned several times already, the query log might be empty, so auto-aggs training only “successfully” finds out that there are no aggs to generate. Or auto-aggs training took longer than 1 hour. In this case, you can perform training repeatedly until it finishes. Training is incremental and resumes where the previous cycle left off. Just train, train, train, and when aggs training is finally done, perform a single data refresh operation. However, how do you decide that aggs training is finished? For this, you must capture the training status raised in an AutoAggsTraining - Progress Report End trace event. This is perhaps most easily accomplished by using SQL Profiler. Make sure you include at least the Progress Report End event class in the trace. The following trace includes an AutoAggsTraining - Progress Report End event with a few important pieces of information: aggregationTableCount is 0, so no aggs tables were generated. queryShapes.eligible is 0, which means in this particular case that auto-aggs training did not find any useful queries in the query log. queryShapes.discarded is empty because the query log was empty to begin with, but if there were discarded query shapes, the discarded property would include one or more of the following counters: Counter Comments DroppedByUser Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) no longer exist in the dataset. ImportMode Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) are in import mode, which auto aggs do not cover. LimitedRelationship Query shapes dropped because of a limited relationship between the queried table(s). RelationshipMismatch Query shapes dropped because of a relationship mismatch between the queried table(s). CalculatedColumn Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) have calculated columns, which is not supported. DualRootTable Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) are in dual mode, which auto aggs do not cover. TableExcludedByUser Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) are explicitly excluded by the user. UnsupportedMDataSource Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) use unsupported M data sources. UnsupportedNativeDataSource Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) use unsupported native data source. SSOEnabled Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) use an SSO-enabled data source, which is not supported. CardinalityEstimationFailure Query shapes dropped because the cardinality estimation of the queried table(s) failed. LargeSizeAggs Query shapes dropped because the aggregation size of the queried table(s) is too large. TableTooSmall Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) are too small to create aggregations. LeftUncovered Query shapes dropped because the queried table(s) are left uncovered because of user-provided training targets. Unknown Query shapes dropped because of unknown failures. Of course, you can also create a trace programmatically, as the attached TOM sample code [attachment=3] demonstrates and the following screenshot illustrates. This time, 77 eligible query shapes existed. Power BI reports had queried the dataset. And aggregationTableCount is 1, so auto-aggs training was able to create one aggs table for this dataset. Success! Congratulations! At this point, we have mastered the first two essential auto aggs tasks. We generated DAX queries and performed auto-aggs training, which added a system-managed aggs table to the dataset. Yet, the aggs table does not yet contain any data, as the DAX query result in the following screenshot reveals. To load the data, we must run data refresh using any of the available options (manual, scheduled, or programmatic). The next screenshot shows this article’s console app performing a programmatic refresh through the following TOM code. The sample code then submits the above DAX query for all system-managed aggs tables to count their rows. In production datasets, there would likely be many aggs tables and any aggs table with actual data can help to improve the performance of your DirectQuery dataset. /// Refresh the model to import data into the aggs tables. /// model.RequestRefresh(RefreshType.Full); model.SaveChanges(); leshooting_automatic_aggregations_to_optimize_DirectQuery_performance And this concludes this little excursion into auto-aggs processing details. We hope the explanations provide you with sufficient details to master the most common auto-aggs troubleshooting situations. The sample code might also serve as a starting point for a custom solution to add fine-tuned auto aggs to your enterprise BI DirectQuery models. Don’t hesitate to download the attached TOM sample code [attachment=4] and try out different AutomaticAggregationOptions settings. For example, you could set the AggregationTableMaxRows parameter or the DetailTableMinRows parameter and see for yourself how different limits affect the generation of your aggs tables. And as always, please provide us with feedback as you leverage automatic aggregations to boost the performance of your DirectQuery datasets. We would love to hear from you!Announcing automatic scaling for dataset scale-out public preview
We’re excited to announce that we’ve reached the final milestone in our dataset scale-out public preview journey! We started the preview without auto-sync and with single read-only replica per dataset. A few months ago, we introduced auto-sync, and now Power BI can create as many read-only replicas as your Power BI capacity supports. Dataset scale-out is no longer limited to a single read-only replica per dataset. Dataset scale-out is a feature that enables you to create read-only replicas of your datasets and distribute the query load among them automatically. A read-only replica is a dataset copy that can serve queries but cannot be updated by refresh operations. By having multiple read-only replicas, you can reduce the query latency and increase the throughput of your dataset. This is especially useful for scenarios where you have a high number of concurrent users or complex queries that consume a lot of resources. To use dataset scale-out, you need to have a Fabric, Power BI Premium, or Power BI Embedded capacity that supports this feature. On capacities smaller than a P3, datasets can only have a single read-only replica because the compute power of these capacities typically doesn’t warrant higher replica counts. For P3 and above, datasets can scale to two or more read-only replicas depending on client load and processor utilization. To enable scale-out for an individual dataset, you must set the maxReadOnlyReplicas parameter in the queryScaleOutSettings to a non-zero value, as demonstrated in our previous announcement of automatic replica synchronization for dataset scale-out. We recommend setting the maxReadOnlyReplicas parameter to a value of -1, so that Power BI can manage the read-only replica count automatically for you. You can verify the current number of read-only replicas at any time by using the /queryScaleOut/syncStatus API, as shown in the following screenshot. This API returns the sync status of each read-only replica: We’re super excited that dataset scale-out is now feature complete because it can provide many benefits to your Power BI experience, such as: Improved performance - By having multiple dataset replicas, you can reduce the query latency and increase the throughput of your datasets. This means faster and smoother reports and dashboards for your users. Reduced refresh impact - By having read-only replicas separate from the read-write replica, you can reduce the impact of refresh operations on your reports and dashboards. When you refresh your dataset, Power BI only updates the read-write replica while the read-only replicas continue to serve queries. The subsequent sync operation is fast and transparent with less disruption and more consistency for your users. If you want to learn more, please visit our documentation page. We hope you enjoy our Dataset Scale-Out feature and we look forward to hearing your feedback.Improving the communication performance of XMLA-based tools
We are thrilled to announce that we have made some significant performance improvements to the XMLA-endpoint communication in Power BI. Specifically, we have switched XMLA-based communication from plain text XML to binary XML and enabled compression for the .NET client libraries. Make sure you upgrade to version 19.65.12.0 or later. You can always find the latest versions on the Analysis Services client libraries download page. Also make sure you update any tools that ship the Analysis Services client libraries as part of their binaries. This can greatly reduce the data volume and accelerate the data transfer between XMLA-based clients and the Power BI Service. It also benefits the service-internal communication wherever the XMLA protocol is used. Prior to this improvement, only the Microsoft Analysis Services OLE DB Provider (MSOLAP) supported compressed binary XML. The managed Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO/TOM) and ADOMD client libraries did not use it. This meant that applications that used the managed client libraries, such as Tabular Editor, DAX Studio, and automation, did not benefit from compressed binary XML communication. Performance without compression -based_tools Performance with compression As the above comparison reveals, compressed binary XML has compelling advantages over plain text XML. By enabling compressed binary XML in our managed client libraries by default, any client application that uses our managed client libraries can enjoy faster and more efficient XMLA communication. We hope you are as excited as we are about this performance improvement. To learn more about how to use XMLA endpoints with the Power BI Service, please see the article Dataset connectivity with the XMLA endpoint in the product documentation. As a side note, compressed binary XML responses have been enabled for Power BI, but Azure Analysis Services continues to use plain text. We might enable compressed binary XML for Azure Analysis Services in the future.
