Power BI semantic models as accelerators for AI-enabled consumption
As data volumes grow exponentially, Power BI customers demand AI-driven analytical solutions that scale to petabytes, are secure, governed, and easy to manage. Power BI semantic models, backed by Microsoft Fabric, are the foundation for user-friendly BI solutions, bridging the gap between business users and IT by enabling trusted ad-hoc analysis. Consequently, Power BI semantic models serve as key enablers of AI-powered insights, ensuring consistent answers to data questions across large organizations and maximizing return on existing Power BI investments. Ubiquitous in enterprise BI Power BI semantic models are the authoritative source of truth for ad-hoc analysis and reporting across countless organizations, empowering over 35 million monthly active users and 95% of Fortune 500 companies. Microsoft is the only vendor to be recognized as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and BI Platforms every year since 2008, positioned as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Business Intelligence Platforms, Q2 2025, and GigaOm Radar for Semantic Layers and Metrics Stores. Based on the most widely adopted BI semantic modeling technology in the market, Power BI semantic models offer a mature API surface area, exceptional performance and scalability for interactive analysis over massive datasets, and a thriving ecosystem of developers, partners, and third-party tools. Bridge the gap between the business and IT Power BI semantic models are uniquely positioned between business users of Microsoft M365 and enterprise data assets in Microsoft Fabric created by professional developers and BI professionals. You can have the most sophisticated data-foundation on the planet, but if your business users aren’t using it because it’s not integrated with the tools they use on a daily basis, it’s not end-user oriented, or they don’t trust it, then it’s pointless. This is the core value proposition of Power BI semantic models – to bridge the gap between business users and enterprise data assets. Enable both centralized and self-service BI Organizations that successfully drive a data culture tend to embrace “discipline at the core and flexibility at the edge”. Power BI semantic models support both centralized and self-service BI use cases. Customers get to choose business-critical data entities requiring organizational discipline and centralized management. Business analysts can easily combine that data with other data from a wide range of sources – without a dependency on IT, duplicating corporate data, or violating governance controls. This represents value for customers because it reduces total cost of ownership through standardization and facilitates collaboration between the business and IT like ownership takeover. Commitment to open standards/platform With Direct Lake storage mode, Power BI semantic models are a key part of Microsoft Fabric’s commitment to open standard formats using Delta Lake and OneLake, enabling customers to avoid lock-in to proprietary vendor storage formats. Power BI semantic models enable open-platform connectivity for a wide range of non-Microsoft data visualization tools through compatibility with the XMLA Endpoint, allowing end users to perform ad-hoc analysis from their tool of choice without needing to create local copies of data. Power BI semantic models are highly programmable using Fabric REST endpoints for CRUD operations, query execution, refresh management, Python notebook support with semantic link, .NET programmability using the Tabular Object Model (TOM), and open metadata definitions using the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) for Git-friendly file formats and scripting automation. Ad-hoc analysis is the sweet spot for Power BI semantic models Enterprise semantic models have always been about enabling non-technical users to ask ad-hoc data questions using business terminology spanning broad subject areas. They deliver trusted insights based on dynamically calculated metrics and dimensionality. Highly curated semantic models surface corporate data using business-friendly naming conventions, abstracting complex business logic for sophisticated calculations, inferred relationships, user hierarchies, metadata translations and much more. With blazing-fast query performance, users are empowered to slice and dice massive datasets at the speed of thought. Together, these capabilities foster trust and drive consistent decisions across the organization. The DAX query language used by semantic models is purpose built for ad-hoc analysis. DAX queries are autogenerated based on end-user interactions, so are context aware and designed to reuse pre-defined definitions in the semantic model. DAX calculations contained within the semantic model enable advanced, aggregated, BI-style calculations that can prove very difficult to define in SQL for scenarios like time intelligence, period-to period comparisons, ratio and contribution analysis, financial and inventory calculations. Contrast with solutions that lack a semantic layer Reporting solutions without a robust semantic layer based on mature BI engine technology often require business logic to be defined on the fly for analytical queries, leading to inconsistent results. AI-based consumption is less deterministic. Query performance is slower because data structures, query plans and query-processing engines are not well optimized for BI-style queries. Lack of presence in tools business users use every day like Microsoft M365 – coupled with the inability for business users to combine data from other data sources without a dependency on IT – leads to ungoverned “shadow IT”, data silos and data fragmentation, which are poisonous to organizations seeking to embrace a data culture. Power BI semantic models are accelerators for AI-enabled consumption The strong foundation in ad-hoc, curated analysis using business-friendly terminology is precisely why Power BI semantic models are key accelerators for AI-based consumption. Now it’s just that the AI is asking the ad-hoc data question on behalf of the user. Natural language data questions are answered more consistently and easily when the AI can rely on business logic encapsulated by semantic models. LLMs are already familiar with well-defined API surface areas for metadata and queries enabling agentic modeling and consumption. Power BI semantic models are already deployed at scale across countless large organizations and primed to accelerate AI-driven consumption of enterprise data. Try Power BI Copilot today! Try the standalone Power BI Copilot experience on existing Power BI semantic models and reports today! Educate Copilot by providing AI instructions and Verified Answers for known business terms and common questions. Empower business users to access the most relevant data assets in Fabric for AI-driven insights, using Copilot discovery based on sophisticated relevance signals. Enable Copilot to ask ad-hoc analysis questions on behalf of business users based on dynamically calculated, pre-defined definitions in your semantic models, and leverage the richness and interactivity of Power BI visuals without leaving the chat experience! Refer to the Overview of Copilot for Power BI documentation to get started. Here is a short demo of Power BI Copilot integrated with Power BI Apps for a scoped discovery experience by subject area. Rich visual interactivity and slice/dice capabilities are demonstrated without leaving the chat experience!
Deprecation of Metric Sets in Power BI
The Metric Sets feature in Power BI will be deprecated, with a phased retirement beginning October 25th, 2025. What’s Changing and When October 25th, 2025: Creation of new Metric Sets will be disabled. November 15th, 2025: Full retirement. Metric Sets will no longer be accessible in Power BI Service or Desktop. Scorecards and all associated datasets or measures will not be impacted by this change. Recommended alternatives If you have relied on Metric Sets, here are recommended approaches to continue managing and tracking your business metrics: Use underlying datasets and measures directly: All metrics in a Metric Set are actually measures in a Power BI dataset. You can continue to use these measures directly in your reports and dashboards. Leverage certified or shared datasets: For a single source of truth, designate certified or shared datasets as your central repository for business metrics. Continue with Power BI Scorecards: For tracking metric values and statuses over time, Scorecards remain a robust and actively supported solution. Explore new metrics experiences: Keep an eye out for new capabilities in Power BI, such as enhanced artifact discovery in Copilot-powered search, which are intended to make it easier to find objects. Next Steps We are committed to making this transition as seamless as possible. If you have existing Metric Sets, please plan to migrate any critical logic or references to alternative solutions before November 15th, 2025. Thank you for being part of the Power BI community and for your continued feedback as we evolve the platform to better meet your needs.
Announcing Metrics Sets are widely available in Preview
In today's data-driven world, organizations need reliable and consistent metrics to make informed decisions. We're excited to introduce Metric Sets Preview, a groundbreaking feature designed to help you define, discover, and reuse trusted metrics across your organization. This new feature is part of our ongoing commitment to enhance your data experience and empower you with the tools you need to succeed. Why Metrics Matter Metrics are the backbone of any data strategy. They provide a standardized way to measure performance, track progress, and make data-driven decisions. However, managing metrics can be challenging, especially as organizations grow and data becomes more complex. Our Metrics solution aims to simplify this process by offering a centralized repository for all your key metrics. Key Features Centralized Metric Management Metric sets allow you to store and manage all your metrics in one place. You can even build specific metric sets (collections) for different teams. This ensures consistency and eliminates the need for duplicate metrics, reducing data silos and improving data quality. Enhanced Discoverability With our intuitive search and navigation features, finding the right metric has never been easier. Whether you're a business user looking for key performance indicators or a data analyst searching for specific measures, Metrics makes it simple to locate and utilize the metrics you need. Seamless Integration Metrics integrate seamlessly with your existing data tools and workflows. Whether you're using Power BI, notebooks, or custom applications, you can easily access and use your metrics without any disruptions. Rich Consumption Experiences Metrics support rich and expanded consumption experiences, allowing you to explore and visualize metrics in new and meaningful ways. This includes the ability to see metrics and associated dimensions, making it easier to understand and act on your data, especially for business users who don’t need to see the entire semantic model. Trust and Reliability Built with security and governance in mind, Metrics ensure that your KPIs and most important measures are reliable and trustworthy. With permissioning and features like detailed usage tracking you can be confident that your data is secure and being used appropriately. The Road Ahead The Metrics Public Preview is just the beginning. We're committed to continuously improving and expanding this feature to meet your evolving needs. In the coming months, we plan to introduce additional capabilities, including more advanced integration options and enhanced data pane experiences. Currently, organizations need to have Fabric enabled and Metric sets need to be created in premium workspaces (Fabric or premium capacities). The tenant setting for metrics must also be enabled. We plan to enable access independent of Fabric, and to extend to Pro workspaces. We invite you to use Metrics and let us know how it starts to improve data quality and transform the way your users interact with and trust their metrics - experience the benefits for yourself. Unlock the full potential of your data and drive your organization forward with Metrics! Check out our documentation for more info - Get started with Metrics - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Gartner Analytics and BI Bake-off 2023: Analysis of Flooding and Flood Mitigation
Each year, as part of the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, Gartner invites vendors from the Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms to show how their product can help solve real-world problems and find insights in real-world data. In previous years we’ve looked into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the impact of COVID-19, the opioid crisis in the USA, and many others. This year’s topic was to analyze factors that may be increasing the risk of flooding and identify mitigation strategies countries might take to combat the risk of flooding disasters. We were asked to use data from OECD’s Flood Risk Indicators and daily weather measurement data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) combined with additional data we could find to perform the analysis. We were given a detailed list of capabilities to cover across three demo sections: data management, analysis and content creation, and sharing findings. We use these sections to showcase the latest and greatest Power BI features we've introduced recently. The sections are very short, typically 4-5 minutes each, and we’re challenged to demo against each other on stage! Here’s a video highlighting the features we demoed at the Gartner event: Gartner Analytics and BI Bake-off 2023: Analysis of Flooding and Flood Mitigation - YouTube
Power BI February 2023 Feature Summary
Welcome to the February 2023 update! This month, we’ve added TypeScript support in the developer playground sandbox, several new formatting features for reporting, and so much more. Continue reading for more details on our new features! Reporting Conditional formatting based on string fields Smart Narrative visual summary icon Formatting image width in table and matrix Update your base theme in Power BI Report theme validation on custom theme import Text box visual indentation New accessible report themes Customize visible pages in the Page navigator visual Sensitivity labels now supported in PDF export from Desktop Enhanced row-level security editor Analytics Quick Create SDK Modeling New DAX functions: LINEST and LINESTX Data Connectivity Denodo (Connector Update) Digital Construction Works Insights (Connector Update) Profisee (Connector Update) Cosmos DB V2 (Connector Update) Service New ‘Get Data’ experience in the Power BI Service Compact view Linked metrics Follow metric Paginated Reports Paginated Reports Formatted Table authoring experience Create a Paginated Report from a datamart Capacity Planning for Paginated Reports Embedded TypeScript support in the playground developer sandbox Visualizations (third party visuals) Editor’s pick of the quarter New visuals in AppSource Milestone Trend Analysis Chart by Nova Silva Multiple Sparklines Inforiver Charts 2.1 is now Microsoft Power BI certified accoPLANNING by Accobat Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts https://www.youtube.com/embed/7-0Pr0U2HIA Reporting Conditional formatting based on string fields This month, you can now set conditional formatting rules based on string fields! We know that many of you have been asking for this feature, so we’re excited to be bringing you this feature and hope you find it a powerful new conditional formatting capability. You can access this new capability in the same way other conditional formatting: through the dialog which opens up from selecting an option in the formatting pane. For example, in column charts, you can conditionally format column colors by selecting the fx button in the Columns card of the formatting pane. In the dialog, select “Rules” through the Format style dropdown, then base these rules on a string field and select a summarization. Before, your summarization options were only numeric – Count and Count (Distinct). Now you’ll see First and Last options as well, which will give you strings to write logic around. In the example below, we add a simple rule to check that the value of the string is Audio, and if it is, we color the column red. Then we hit OK, and the Audio columns of our visual will now be colored red! We’ve added a variety of comparator options to the conditional formatting dialog, including “is”, “starts with”, “ends with”, and more. Keep in mind that these comparisons will check your fields against your inputs for exact character matches, including case-sensitivity. As always, let us know what you think about the feature and ideas you have to improve this or any other aspects of Power BI! Smart Narrative visual summary icon Smart Narrative technology is already available within Power BI, and with this new feature we’ve added an optional icon to the visual header that triggers an on-demand summary of the visual contents. Our hope is that this is useful for Accessibility purposes. It will announce results to any assistive technology. You can enable it in the format pane for individual visuals or add it to your custom theme file for the visual types you choose. It has the same limitations as the existing Smart Narrative visual. Read more here: Smart narratives tutorial - Power BI | Microsoft Learn Formatting image width in table and matrix Image dimensions in table and matrix visuals can now be individually formatted. Prior to this release, there was only one control for image dimensions in table and matrix cells. Despite being labeled as “image height”, this setting in the formatting pane controlled both the width and height of images, causing them to take up square space regardless of their actual dimensions. This caused layout problems, especially when images were wider than they were tall, as rows then took up far more vertical space than necessary. Now that you can change image height and width separately, you can adjust your cells to give your tables or matrices a lot more room! Update your base theme in Power BI We’ve now added an easy way for you to update your current theme in Power BI Desktop! We ship many changes to visuals and reports, including new defaults for formatting settings, as a part of a new base theme so as not to disturb existing reports. These changes don’t propagate to some authors with custom themes, who may not see fixes to issues or updates to their reports without updating their base themes. In the present day, doing so involves opening up the theme gallery, switching to one of our default themes, then switching back to their custom theme, which is an unintuitive process. Now, if you are using an outdated theme, if you enter the “Customize current theme” menu from the theme dropdown in the View tab of the ribbon: You’ll find a banner at the top of your out-of-date themes encouraging you to update to the latest base theme! Click Update theme to see the changes, then hit Apply when ready. Keep in mind that this change will update all of the default behaviors that we’ve changed since your current theme was created, so any specific behavior that your visuals were reliant on may change as well. Check to make sure your report still functions the way you expect after updating your base theme. Report theme validation on custom theme import Creating custom themes can be a daunting task, especially when there are so many visuals and formatting properties you can configure. Mistakes can occur when authoring the theme JSON, property names can change with time, or any number of other issues could render the custom theme file invalid when it’s imported into Power BI. This month, we’re introducing a feature which will validate your theme file upon import to make sure we can successfully read its full contents. If Power BI finds fields it doesn’t understand, it will show you a message letting you know that the theme file is invalid, and invite you to re-import with a corrected theme file. We will also be publishing the schema Power BI uses to check your theme file in a public location, updating it automatically whenever we change it in Power BI, so that you can ensure your theme files are always current. You can find more information about how to use a JSON schema to validate your custom report themes on our GitHub page. Text box visual indentation This month, we’ve introduced new support for indentation to your text box visuals in Power BI! Now, using the increase and decrease indent buttons in the formatting popup next to the text box, you can adjust the indentation of specific lines of your text boxes. You can also use the Tab or Shift+Tab keys to accomplish the same. New accessible report themes This month, to promote authors creating accessible reports with good contrast across their colors, we’ve added some new accessible report themes to the theme dropdown in the View tab of the ribbon: You’ll find them in a new section labeled Accessible themes. Customize visible pages in the Page navigator visual You can now easily decide which report pages are visible within the Page navigator visual. If you want to exclude specific pages, all you need to do is expand the Show card in the Pages section of the formatting pane. Here you’ll see the list of pages that are not already hidden through the “Show hidden pages” or “Show tooltip pages” options. All you need to do to hide specific pages is turn the toggle for that page to Off. If you have many pages in your report that you want to hide within the Page navigator visual, it can be faster to instead just specify which ones you specifically want to show. To do this, turn the Show all by default toggle to Off in the Options card, which will immediately turn all pages within the Show card to Off. From there, you can then go in and just turn back on the specific pages you want visible. Sensitivity labels now supported in PDF export from Desktop Power BI Desktop now joins the service in supporting sensitivity labels from Microsoft Purview Information Protection for export to PDF. Now when you export to PDF from Desktop, the sensitivity label on the PBIX file (if any) is applied to the exported PDF file, thus ensuring that your sensitive data remains protected even after it has left Power BI. Sensitivity label support in Desktop for export to PDF is currently a preview feature that is on by default. For more information, see Export reports from Power BI to PDF. Enhanced row-level security editor Now you can quickly and easily define row-level security roles and filters without having to write any DAX! Select ‘Manage roles’ in the ribbon to use the new drop-down interface to create and edit security roles. If you prefer DAX or require DAX for your filter definitions, we support toggling between using the default drop-down editor and a DAX editor. All changes made in either editor interface will persist when switching interfaces when possible. However, not all row-level security filters supported in Power BI can be defined using the default editor. Limitations include expressions that can only be defined using DAX including dynamic rules such as username() or userprincipalname(). When defining a role with these limitations in the DAX editor, if you attempt to switch to the default editor you will be prompted with a warning that switching editors may result in some information being lost. To keep this information simply select ‘Cancel’ and continue only editing this role in the DAX editor. Try it today by going to Files > Options and Settings > Options > Preview features and turn on “Enhanced row-level security editor”. Analytics Quick Create SDK We’re excited to announce a new form of Power BI embedded analytics that enables you to embed an interactive data exploration and report creation experience in your applications. With this solution, you’ll be able to provide your users a similar experience to our integrations in Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. Refer to our full announcement post for more details. Modeling New DAX functions: LINEST and LINESTX This month, we are introducing two new statistical DAX functions: LINEST and LINESTX. These two functions perform linear regression, leveraging the Least Squares method, to calculate a straight line that best fits the given data and return a table describing that line. These functions are especially useful in predicting unknown values (Y) given known values (X). Both functions return a single-row table describing the line and additional statistics. The resulting table includes columns such as slopes, intercepts, standard errors, and the coefficient of determination. The equation of the fitted line can be constructed: Y = Slope1 * X1 + Slope2 * X2 + …+ Intercept. The difference between LINEST and LINESTX is that LINEST expects columns of known X and Y values to be provided, whereas LINESTX expects a table and expressions to be evaluated for each row of the table to obtain the X and Y values. For the following examples, I use the following data, which includes Sales Amount and gross national product (GNP) per capita: In the example below I use LINESTX to predict total sales based on GNP per capita: LinestX_example = VAR CountryGNP = SUMMARIZE( Sales, 'GNP_Country'[Country], 'GNP_Country'[GNP_Per_Capita], "Total Sales", SUM(Sales[Sales Amount]) ) VAR SalesPrediction = LINESTX( 'CountryGNP', [Total Sales], [GNP_Per_Capita] ) VAR Example_GNP_Per_Capita = 50000 RETURN SELECTCOLUMNS( SalesPrediction, [Slope1] ) * Example_GNP_Per_Capita + SELECTCOLUMNS( SalesPrediction, [Intercept] ) This expression not only leverages LINESTX but also leverages the result to perform a prediction for a fictious country with gross national product per capita of $50,000. The result is a predicted total sales of $17,426,123.29. Of course this is a fabricated scenario and it’s rare to have a fixed value such as the $50,000 above as part of the expression. I can do the same using LINEST assuming the required tables are all in the model, for example as calculated tables. In this example, I added the following calculated tables: CountryDetails, defined as: CountryDetails = SUMMARIZECOLUMNS( 'GNP_Country'[Country], 'GNP_Country'[GNP_Per_Capita], "Total Sales", SUM(Sales[Sales Amount])) SalesPredictionLINEST, defined as: SalesPredictionLINEST = LINEST('CountryDetails'[Total Sales], 'CountryDetails'[GNP_Per_Capita]) Now I can use following measure expression to obtain the same result as above: Linest_example = VAR Example_GNP_Per_Capita = 50000 RETURN MAX ( SalesPredictionLINEST[Slope1] ) * Example_GNP_Per_Capita + MAX ( SalesPredictionLINEST[Intercept] ) To learn more about these functions, see their documentation pages: LINEST and LINESTX. Data Connectivity Denodo (Connector Update) The Denodo connector has been updated. Below are notes from the Denodo team. Added option to the Denodo.Contents function to work around issues with relationship discovery in tables with a large amount of relationships. Digital Construction Works Insights (Connector Update) This connector’s Beta flag has been removed. Profisee (Connector Update) The Profisee connector has been updated. Below are notes from the Profisee team. Updated error handling to support changes in the 2022 R2 release. Removed the Beta flag Cosmos DB V2 (Connector update) This release contains an update to the Cosmos DB V2 connector that improves DirectQuery performance when a filter on partition key is specified. Service New ‘Get Data’ experience in the Power BI Service As called out in the December blog, we have completed the process of removing the older ‘Get Data’ page in the Power BI service in favor of the new, comparable features available within workspaces. The change removed the entry points to the old ‘Get Data’ page as shown below. From now on, you’ll be able to access comparable features within workspaces. If you want to upload a file to Power BI, such as a .pbix, .xlsx, or .rdl file to your workspace, you can use the Upload option that was released in November. This option lets you upload files from your local computer or connect to files on OneDrive or a SharePoint site. With this change, you’ll no longer be able to connect to files on personal OneDrive accounts. If instead you want to create a dataset from Excel or CSV data, you can now access that functionality through the New > Dataset option in the workspace you want to create the dataset in. We have also updated this Dataset option to take you to a new page with options to create a dataset off an Excel, CSV, or pasting in data. Once you select the file, the behavior used to generate the dataset is the same as previously used on the ‘Get Data’ page. Once the dataset is created, you’ll be taken to the dataset’s details page in the Data hub. This month we are excited to release compact view and a few improvements to favorite and linked metrics. Compact view Scorecards were built for easy readability on larger screens, but they let you view only a few metrics at a time which led to a ton of scrolling when there were a lot of metrics. To make it easier to use we have released a denser version that doubles the number of metrics that can be viewed on the screen. By tightening the scorecard, removing the spacing between metric and the padding within a metric, we have designed a condensed view of the scorecard called the compact view in addition to the list (original) view. You can switch to the compact view of the scorecard by using the view selector in the scorecard header. The compact view is responsive, adjusting smoothly to various screen sizes and supports resizing of columns. You can do all the functionality that is available in the list view of the scorecard except editing and creating a new metric. This is disabled in the edit mode of compact view and can only be done in the list view. In the next couple weeks, we will be adding two new settings in the column settings pane to customize the layout – text wrapping for metric name and horizontal scroll. Toggling on the horizontal scroll option will let you navigate left to right until you reach the final column. Whereas by setting to off, your view of this scorecard will leave off the columns that don't fit on one screen without scrolling. Linked metrics In December we shipped linked metrics, that lets you show the same metric on multiple scorecards, across multiple workspaces. We shipped a few improvements to linked metrics this month. If you now link multiple metrics at once, the parent-child relationships and the metrics’ order from the source scorecard are preserved in the destination scorecard. And you can now use the “Set For All” option to apply permissions to descendant metrics on the source scorecard, even if there are linked metrics in between the parent and descendants. Follow metric Last year we shipped Follow metric functionality to quickly access metrics you’re interested in and stay up to date on the activity on these metrics through Teams notifications. Based on customer feedback we have changed the icon of follow metric to an alert icon for better association with notifications: Paginated Reports Paginated Reports Formatted Table authoring experience In the last update, we introduced accessible navigation, move and resize as well as grand totals. This month we are introducing you to some improvements for paginated reports and additional capabilities when using formatted table. Parameter Pane for Paginated Reports Paginated reports are known for their use of parameters. Customers use parameters a lot, in fact, about 70% of all our user base uses parameters with paginated reports. We have made some accessibility improvements for better screen reader support and keyboard navigation. The date picker now has a “Go to today”, month, and year view to make it easier for date selection. We made all dropdowns list values resizable, so you can drag and resize values with longer lengths. You will also notice performance improvements for parameters with long lists. To learn more about parameters, please check out our documentation. Create a Paginated Report from a datamart Customers can now create a paginated report directly from a datamart. There are two entry points: Directly from the context menu of a datamart Or from the Data hub when you click on the datamart to open datamart details. Capacity Planning for Paginated Reports For customers interested in migrating their enterprise on-premises Business Intelligence reports to Power BI, plan your Premium capacity to get the best performance out of your paginated reports. Review our capacity document before you decide which capacity to use. There are also links to other useful resources to check out in there as well. With the announcement of support for paginated reports in Power BI Pro at the PASS Data Community Summit, we also published a migration guidance document for customers. Be sure to check out our new migration tool as well. If you want to continue the conversation and provide feedback to our team directly on ways we can continue to improve paginated reports, join our user research panel. We look forward to hearing from you! Embedded TypeScript support in the playground developer sandbox We are excited to announce that Typescript is now available in the developer sandbox in the Power BI embedded playground! Until now, only JavaScript was available in the sandbox, and we've now made it possible to code in TypeScript as well. The Power BI embedded playground is the go-to place for all things Power BI embedded, including the developer sandbox, showcases of different capabilities and sample scenarios, and resources for learning. The playground helps you experience Power BI embedded and gives you the tools you need to deliver compelling data experiences for your end users and empower them to take action based on the insights from your solutions data. The developer sandbox gives you hands-on coding experience, allowing you to embed your own reports (or use our sample report) and interact with the Power BI client APIs. This means you can see instant results without having to build your own environment. To switch to TypeScript in the sandbox, simply click on the new dropdown in the upper right corner and select your preferred language. If you are logged in and you choose to save your code in the playground, it will keep your selected language and load it the next time you visit the playground. Visualizations (third party visuals) Editor’s pick of the quarter Balance Sheet Visual by K Team Solutions Gantt Chart by MAQ Software Supermetrics Charts – Tile grid map Tachometer valQ – Collaborate Zebra BI Charts New visuals in AppSource Beeswarm Chart Cumulative by sio2Graphs DoubleYaxis swUniaxialScatterPlot swBoxPlot sw3D_StackedBarDiagram PictureThis Milestone Trend Analysis Chart by Nova Silva Based on your excellent feedback we have been able to further improve the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart. Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) is a simple method of early identifying deadline trends. It allows you to react in time with corrective actions. And it will raise the deadline awareness of all project participants and stakeholders. Key updates in the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart are: Zoom slider support to allow for easy navigation through time Support for different marker icons Direct labeling: allow the user to use series labels to replace the legend Tooltip will include details of all overlapping markers AppSource eCommerce transactability: purchase and manage your licenses like any Microsoft license Dark mode support: all elements can be formatted to support a dark background The Milestone Trend Analysis Chart makes use of the familiar standard Power BI user interface. No need to learn a new interface. Themes, interactive selection and tooltips are supported. Don’t hesitate and try the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart now on your own data by downloading it from the AppSource. All features are available for free to evaluate this visual within Power BI Desktop. Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com/. Multiple Sparklines New features were added to Multiple sparklines in Nov 22 update 1) Matrix format allowing you to display hierarchical data in rows 2) Multiple Axes for trend charts (sparklines, column chart, stacked column, combo chart) Download this visual from APPSOURCE For more information visit https://www.excelnaccess.com/sparklines/ or contact [email protected] Inforiver Charts 2.1 is now Microsoft Power BI certified Inforiver Charts 2.1, the fastest way to visualize, explore and tell data stories, is now Microsoft Power BI certified. The latest version 2.1 features significant feature updates, user experience (UX) enhancements, and a new developer-only pricing plan that can be directly purchased from Microsoft AppSource. This new pricing plan allows for unlimited viewers and avoids license management & administration hassles. What’s new in Inforiver Charts 2.1: New visualizations Executive Horizontal/Vertical funnel chart with secondary KPI Stacked/paired breakdown waterfall charts Slopegraph Charts with integrated KPI card headers New Use Cases Banded bar and column charts for manufacturing and production KPI reporting Create and display secondary KPIs on visuals (using ‘Others’ data field) with integrated formula engine. Create stamp-sized, micro layouts and KPI spark cards Enhanced User experience (UX) and productivity For developers: Multiple toolbar modes (full or floating), quick feature search, on-canvas element interactivity, responsiveness, font scaling & more For viewers: Increased reading mode options, contextual drilldown for exploratory analysis & more Storytelling enhancements Customizable legends, titles, KPI card headers, annotations, analytics and more Themes Choose between classic Power BI-like color themes, IBCS standards or custom themes matching your corporate branding. See Inforiver Charts demos here. accoPLANNING by Accobat Enable writeback for any Power BI model. Use Power BI for planning and forecast. With this visual you can now writeback numbers, text and dates on any existing or new Power BI model. Check out the new advanced features like leaf level shadow calculation. Enhanced copy and paste functionality and the direct purchase and maintenance of licensing through AppSource and Office 365. Key new functionalities: Shadow calculations: Enables you to avoid performance overhead on your leaf calculations like Price * Quantity. You will benefit from having the result of your calculations stored in the writeback table for use in other models or systems. Realtime calculations while you are typing. General enhancements Optimized and extended functionality for copying and pasting of data from Excel, providing you with a fast and easy way to add data to your model. Better handling of typing long comments and text with cell scrollbar and mouse over preview of text. AppSource license handling: You can now purchase license directly from the AppSource Easy and flexible license allocation to relevant users though the Office 365 Admin portal With the accoPLANNING visual, you combine the planning and reporting process in Power BI. For more information, visit our website. Appsource: https://appsource.microsoft.com/product/power-bi-visuals/WA200002600?tab=Overview Video: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ZJtjjF_cQ Onedrive share: https://1drv.ms/v/s!AlU_JQ6gXMzlgaVWx4zj-0dTIDTDmA Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts Drill Down Donut PRO for Power BI lets users create visually appealing donut charts for easy data exploration. All interactions take place on the chart itself using just the mouse, letting users enjoy intuitive interactions that guide the eye. Fully customize the look of your chart with advanced formatting options and even choose from different chart types Main features: Adjustable “Others” slice – set the number of visible slices and group the rest. Cross-chart filtering – use the chart as a filter for the rest of the report. Multi-level drill down – drill down up to 9 levels. Full customization – customize slices, labels, and the legend. Desktop and mobile device navigation – explore charts the same way on any device. Popular use cases: Sales and marketing – measuring campaign performance and research results. Human resources – staff composition, salary distribution, performance data. Accounting and finance – income and expense analysis, billings, and debtors. Project management – risk distribution, resource allocation. If you would like to read more about these features, check out our helpful blog post. To get started with Drill Down Donut PRO, get it now from AppSource or learn more in our product page! And that's all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback, and don't forget to vote for other features you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! A few quick reminders: If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review. Also, don't forget to vote on your favorite feature this month over on our community website. And as always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We look forward to hearing from you soon!
Simplifying capacity management with unified v-cores
We're excited to announce a platform update to simplify the way customers manage Power BI Premium capacities. Starting on December 11th 2022, we'll be rolling out changes to unify the concepts of front-end and back-end virtual cores for capacity management. Unification of these concepts addresses the feedback we've heard from customers who sometimes misinterpret the concepts of customer-managed v-cores from Microsoft managed v-cores. This change will simplify the model used by customers to both manage capacities and rationalize usage metrics against capacity sizing decisions. How do Premium capacity v-cores work today? Power BI Premium has historically used v-cores as the unit of measure that customers use to reserve compute resources when purchasing a capacity. After a capacity is purchased, its resources can then be used to run a variety of Power BI workloads. Before this change, purchased v-cores in a reserved capacity would be split evenly between front-end cores used by Microsoft for service delivery and back-end cores used by customers to power workload execution. In this model, capacity Administrators only manage back-end v-cores which account for 50% of the purchased v-core capacity. How are we simplifying our approach to capacities? The Capacities Team is on a mission to deliver scalable cloud compute with the simplicity of SaaS experiences to our customers. Unification of front-end and backend v-cores for capacity management is another step in the platform evolution to simplify capacity management while offering nearly limitless scale and flexibility. With this platform update, capacity Administrators can purchase and manage resources using a single v-core pool for each capacity. What does this change mean for my existing capacities? In order to make this change as seamless as possible for customers, we are enacting changes to both the capacity platform and usage reporting experiences. The amount of effective "throughput" on each capacity SKU will remain the same before and after these changes. Updates will be made to scale usage reporting and adjust for the unification of v-cores. To better describe the implications of the change we'll examine a before and after example. Before unified v-cores: A customer who purchases a P1 capacity is provided with a total of 8 v-cores evenly split between front-end and back-end services. A P1 capacity would provide 120 seconds of compute over 4 backend v-cores for each 30 second evaluation period. In this example, we will use a hypothetical workload "W1" which consumes 60 seconds of compute. When comparing workload consumption to available compute on the P1 capacity, the platform would measure "W1" as consuming 50% of the P1 capacity throughput during that workload evaluation period. After unified v-cores: A P1 capacity provides 8 v-cores of unified compute resources. The 8 v-cores of unified compute will yield 240 seconds of computing resources per 30 second evaluation window. To scale usage proportionally in the new unified v-core model, "W1" will now consume 120 seconds of compute. In the unified v-core model "W1" would still consume 50% of the P1 capacity throughput. Where will I see these changes? Customers will see updates throughout the premium product and documentation to reflect the impact of unified v-cores. In the Power BI Premium Capacity SKU table below, you can easily review the before and after impact of these changes. Capacity Administrators will see these platform changes reflected in the Capacity Metrics Application. Timepoint drill views in the Metrics App will now show: Updated values for available compute on each SKU Adjusted usage reporting metrics The percentage of capacity utilization for a given workload will not change because of this update. How can I learn more about capacity management in Power BI Premium Gen2? Our documentation is a great first step to learn more about how you can use capacities to power Premium workload engines at scale. For a video walkthrough of Power BI Premium Gen2, you can view our Premium Gen2 Webinar. This includes a detailed walkthrough of: Gen2 platform architecture and scalability improvements The benefits of our updated smoothing policies for interactive and background processes to simplify capacity management A deep dive on how workload evaluation occurs in capacities and its impact to auto-scale and throttling When will I see changes, what do Capacity Administrators need to do? These updates will start rolling out globally on 12/11. At that time, capacity Administrators should update to the latest Capacity Metrics App version to guarantee the best experience analyzing capacity usage on the unified v-core Power BI Premium platform.Power BI October 2022 Feature Summary
Welcome to the October 2022 update. This month’s update is packed with exciting updates to features like Power BI metrics, Modeling, Deployment pipelines, and more. Please read on for all the details, and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. We would love to hear from you! Reporting Reverse stack order for stacked column charts Query performance improvements Indexing imported string columns on-the-fly Pushing Top N filter to DirectQuery sources Power BI Metrics Roll ups New API to retrieve scorecards for admins Analytics Quick measure suggestions – experimental feature Modeling Relationship editing in the properties pane DAX formula bar support for Desktop model view Data connectivity and preparation Introducing tenant setting for Power BI Datamarts Eduframe Reporting Socialbakers Metrics Service Guest users can now create their own email subscriptions Downloading a PBIX is now available for more scenarios Admin & governance Introducing tenant setting for email subscriptions to external users Deployment pipelines Deployment History Azure DevOps extension Changes to UpdateApp REST API Developers Custom visuals API version 5.1 Visualizations New visuals in AppSource Zebra BI Tables 6.0 Inforiver Enterprise SaaS Edition PowerGantt Chart by Nova Silva Drill Down Network PRO by ZoomCharts Other Update to release notes Check out the video below for this month's summary: https://youtu.be/Vlo7dJgr4WM Reporting Reverse stack order for stacked column charts This month, you can now reverse the order in which we render segments in stacked column and bar charts. This can be particularly helpful to help users match the category groupings of strictly positive columns against vertically aligned legends. We usually draw column segments from the zero line upwards, but we’ll list those categories in legends in left-to-right, top-to-bottom order. This can sometimes lead to the feeling that their orders are “reversed.” With this release, you will find a new formatting pane option to reverse stack order of your stacked column and bar, area, ribbon, and combo charts. The toggle will be off by default. Turning it on will flip the order in which your segments are stacked. Note: due to an issue we found late in development, this feature will be unavailable in the Service for published reports until later this month. You will still be able to set the toggle in Desktop, but report behavior in the Service will not change until around October 17th at the earliest. Query performance improvements This month we have made the following query performance improvements. Indexing imported string columns on-the-fly We are building indexes on imported string columns to improve query performance of substring searches, i.e. when using ContainsString function, Search function or a filter to look for a string literal in a text column. Here’s an example of a text filter set using the filter pane: We build the index when the first query that requests a substring search on the column is executed. The index is built for text columns that contain ASCII characters only. Once the index is built, substring search becomes instant. Note that the index is not persisted between restarts of Power BI Desktop. Pushing Top N filter to DirectQuery sources Up until now, when using the TOPN function or a top N filter on a column from a DirectQuery source all values of the column would be retrieved and then the top N filter would be applied within the DAX engine. Here’s an example of a top N filter set using the filter pane: To improve performance, we have changed that behavior: as of this release, we are pushing top N filters to DirectQuery sources when possible. When the Top N filter is based on a measure, the measure has to be based on one of the aggregations: SUM/MIN/MAX/COUNT/COUNTROWS/DISTINCTCOUNT. Power BI Metrics We have two exciting updates to announce for Power BI metrics. This month, we have additions of metric roll ups for current and target values and the get scorecard admin API. Roll ups Previously in Metrics, there was no way to automatically aggregate a group of submetrics’ values to the parent metric value. You could work around this by connecting values to data but before this month, there was no way to auto roll up manual values – all non-connected metrics required check-ins to update the values. Now, with the release of current and target roll ups, you have the ability to set an aggregation of your submetrics to show in your parent metric. You can select from a few aggregation types: sum, average, min and max values. Whichever aggregation you choose will automatically update the value to show the correct aggregation value of its direct submetrics. Roll ups work on connected values as well – if your submetrics are connected to data, we will take the aggregations of those values and show it in the parent metric. This makes it easier than ever to stay on top of your manual parent metrics. New API to retrieve scorecards for admins We are releasing a new admin API that is instrumental in helping our admins with their many administrative tasks and is critical in examining the state of existing scorecards. This new get scorecard API is enabled for admins in Power BI and will retrieve all scorecards within an organization. The API will retrieve scorecard metadata as well as metadata for each metric on the scorecards. This is a great new API for Power BI admins. Analytics Quick measure suggestions – experimental feature A few years ago Power BI released a feature called Quick Measures that allows Desktop users to create DAX measures using a built-in template instead of writing the DAX from scratch. This feature helped users quickly get started with common measure scenarios; however, the number of templates and flexibility of those templates left more to be desired. Now, we’re introducing Quick Measure Suggestions, which is a new way to assist creation of DAX measures using natural language instead of using templates or writing DAX from scratch. Read more about this feature in the documentation. Enabling the feature To enable the feature, you will need to first navigate to the Options menu of Power BI Desktop and turn on the preview switch for Quick measure suggestions: To access the Quick measure suggestions, select Modeling tab within the ribbon and then select Quick measure: Then select the Suggestions tab: Here you can describe the measure you want to create and hit Generate (or enter key) to get DAX measure suggestions: You should always validate the DAX suggestions to make sure they meet your needs. If you’re satisfied with a suggested measure, you can click the Add button to automatically add the measure to your model. Here are some examples of supported measure scenarios: Aggregated columns with or without filters Count of rows with or without filters Aggregate per category Mathematical operations Selected value If condition Text operations Time intelligence Relative time filtered value Most / least common value Top N values for a category Check out our documentation for more information and detailed examples. Limitations and considerations Quick measure suggestions are NOT a replacement for learning DAX. The suggestions provided by the feature are meant to help fast track measure creation; however, you will still need to validate the DAX suggestions because they can be wrong or not match your intent. This feature is in experimental preview for users to test and give feedback. Note that the design and functionality may go through significant changes. The feature is powered by a machine learning model that is currently only deployed to US datacenters (East US and West US). If your data is outside the US, the feature will be disabled by default unless your tenant admin enables Allow user data to leave their geography tenant setting: Modeling Relationship editing in the properties pane Now you can quickly edit relationships in the properties pane! In the modeling view, expand the properties pane and simply click on any relationship line to see all the relationship options. This new relationship editing experience sends minimal queries by having no data preview and validating only when you apply changes. Big data models, especially in DirectQuery storage mode, will see the most benefit from this streamlined experience. Should you need to edit using the relationships dialog, this is still available from the properties pane, or by double clicking any line just like before. In addition, this also introduces editing multiple relationships at once. Hold down CTRL to select multiple relationships and make changes, or even click the delete key on your keyboard to delete those selected. Try it today by going to Files > Options and Settings > Options > Preview features and turn on “Relationship pane”. DAX formula bar support for Desktop model view The DAX formula bar is now supported in Desktop model view. You can now create and edit measures, calculated columns, and calculated tables in the model view on Desktop. Data connectivity and preparation Introducing tenant setting for Power BI Datamarts Back in May 2022, we announced the public preview of Power BI Datamarts, which provide a user-friendly means to ingest data from different data sources, ETL the data using Power Query, and load it into a fully managed Azure SQL database. Based on feedback from our customers, we are very pleased to announce the introduction of AAD-based filtration to the Power BI Datamart preview tenant setting, enabling Power BI Service Admins to limit the ability to create Datamarts to certain groups or individuals. Datamart configuration settings can be accessed via the Tenant Settings tab in the Power BI Admin Portal: Check out this article for a comprehensive overview of the benefits provided by Datamarts. Eduframe Reporting The Eduframe Reporting connector has been updated. Please find below notes from the Drieam team. Added custom fields to program editions, planned courses and orders. Changing language no longer breaks decimal and currency parsing. Socialbakers Metrics We are excited to announce the release of the new Socialbakers Metrics connector. Please find below notes from the Emplifi team. Integrating social media insights alongside the rest of your marketing or business intelligence data gives you a holistic understanding of your entire digital strategy, all in one place. With Socialbakers Power BI Connector by Emplifi, you’ll be able to include social media data from the Emplifi Platform in your charts and graphs and combine them with other data you own. The Power BI Connector is a layer between Socialbakers (an Emplifi Company) Public API and Power BI itself. It helps you work with your data intuitively, directly in the Power BI tool. The majority of data and metrics available in the Socialbakers Public API are also available in the Connector. Please visit the official API documentation for more information about Socialbakers (an Emplifi Company) Public API and a list of available metrics. You’ll find it here: https://api.socialbakers.com/. Service Guest users can now create their own email subscriptions We’re excited to announce that Azure Active Directory Business-to-Business (Azure AD B2B) guest users can now create their own email subscriptions in Power BI. Email subscriptions make it easy to stay on top of your most important reports and dashboards by receiving a snapshot in your inbox at customizable frequencies. Instead of requiring users in your organization to create subscriptions on behalf of guest users, we’re now empowering guest users to create their own subscriptions for Power BI reports, dashboards, and paginated reports they have access to. The requirements for a guest user to subscribe themselves to content are the same as for any user: either they’ll need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license, or the workspace where the content is saved must be backed by a Premium capacity. For now, guest users can only subscribe themselves, not others. Downloading a PBIX is now available for more scenarios Starting this release, we are introducing multiple options to download a report .pbix file. While downloading a report .pbix file, you will see the following dialog: As is shown in the dialog, you can now choose between downloading the report including data as well as downloading the report without the data, but with a live connection to the data. Note that depending on your exact scenario only one option might be available. In these situations you will see the other option as disabled. A tooltip will explain why that option is not available, as can be seen in the image below: In most cases, however, you will be able to download the report with a live connection to the data even when downloading the report with the data included is not supported. This unlocks the following situations in which you previously could not download a report .pbix file: Download reports created based on a dataset that is configured for large models. Download reports created based on a dataset that is configured for incremental refresh. Download reports created based on a dataset that has been modified by using the XMLA endpoint. Download any .pbix file that is larger than 1 GB. Downloading usage metric reports. To read more about downloading a .pbix file from the service in our documentation, including important information about existing limitations. Admin & governance Introducing tenant setting for email subscriptions to external users If your report or dashboard is hosted in a Premium capacity, you can include external users as recipients to your email subscriptions. External users are users outside of your organization that have not yet been invited to become Azure Active Directory Business-to-Business (Azure AD B2B) guest users. Based on customer feedback, we’re pleased to announce a new tenant setting that specifically controls whether email subscriptions can be sent to external users. With the new tenant setting called Allow email subscriptions to be sent to external users, Power BI admins can control who can send email subscriptions to external users, either turning this capability on or off for the entire organization or limiting this capability to specific security groups. The external user email subscription setting can be accessed via the Tenant Settings tab in the Power BI Admin portal: Deployment pipelines Deployment History We’re excited to announce Deployments History! A new feature of Deployment pipelines, available today. Having troubles tracking a pipeline’s deployment executions? Something seems to have changed on your test environment workspace and you’re not sure what and why? Your last deployment failed, and you have no idea how to get its ID for the support ticket? Problem solved! With our new Deployment pipeline feature ‘Deployment History’, all your recent months deployments are available to be reviewed, providing details on the target environment, the person who ran the deployment, the deployed items, the deployment note’s content (if been added) and more. With Deployment history we also added the option to add a note as part of a deployment process. This note appears next to its deployment history record and assists with providing context when you review past deployments. This note is not editable. The Deployment History page can be accessed through either a general entry point - a new Deployment History button, or through the Deployment History clickable icon of a deployed stage: The Deployment history page lists the deployments chronologically from newest to oldest: By default, all the deployments are listed on one list. However, you can narrow your scope to focus on a specific deployed target stage by easily filtering this list using the clickable tabs at the top of the page. Icons on the left side of each deployment indicate whether the deployment succeeded or failed, how many deployed items were different/New/same on the deployed stage before the deployment, whether it has a note or not and its ID. Clicking on them, expands the deployment record and provides additional details such as failure reason, list of the deployed items (name and type), the note content and the id string. Deployment History is already available for your pipelines today so try it out! Learn more. Azure DevOps extension Following our last announcement in January of launching Azure Devops extension, today we are excited to share that this feature is generally available! As stated, ADO extension contains all the API operations available today for deployment pipelines so they can be used with Azure pipelines, while integrating additional capabilities into the release process such as automated testing, approvals and more. Learn more about the Power BI automation tools extension Changes to UpdateApp REST API Lately, Power BI Apps announced the public preview of Multiple Audiences in the Power BI Apps, which adding the capability to manage an App content by different audiences, individually. Following this change, Deployment pipeline UpdateApp REST API was changed to exclude the action of adding new deployed items to the app. Learn more. Developers Custom visuals API version 5.1 We have updated the custom visuals API to version 5.1. Highlights of this update include: Support for new format pane. Using the 5.1 version of the API, you can now define modern format pane cards, sub-categories and new properties on custom visuals using the new API `getFormattingModel`, The new API is a replacement for old API `enumerateObjectInstances`. It’s never been easier for report creators to use custom visuals! Learn more about the API in this article. Identity filter API (new). API 5.1 introduces a new Identity filter API. This API allows you to create a visual that can filter categorical data. In other words, it filters the data using data points rather than mathematical expressions. This is useful for custom visuals that leverage group-on keys and to allow selections using identities that are opaque. Additionally, this new API makes it easier to migrate visuals to a newer API. For more information see the documentation. Extending the subtotal API for matrix. We are adding a new option to the subtotal API. The rowSubtotalsType: ("Top" or "Bottom") allows the visual to fetch the subtotal data on top (before the rest of the data) or bottom (after all the data was fetched). This is available with 5.1 API release. For more details see the article. New sorting option for Power BI custom visuals. Previously, we had two sorting options in custom visuals: default and implicit. With the 5.1 API release, we have added a new custom option. The Custom sort option gives the developers more control over the sorting options, such as sorting by multiple fields. For more details see our documentation. Visualizations New visuals in AppSource The following are new visuals this update: KPI CircleCard Plotly Waterfall Chart Text search slicer Zebra BI Tables 6.0 Zebra BI Tables visual just got a major update! Huge performance optimization, new drill options, enhanced highlighting settings, bookmarking all settings and much more is now possible. Watch the video to see the new functionalities: https://youtu.be/HlXRrPfHX6Q THE FASTEST CUSTOM VISUAL: Zebra BI Tables 6.0 is the first visual that uses a completely new data fetching algorithm introduced by Microsoft. What does that mean? We no longer need to fetch all the data. Instead, when a user drills into rows, only the necessary data is loaded, which means that the loading time for complex matrixes with several hierarchies can be up to 50x faster! MORE ACCESSIBILITY IN DATA STORYTELLING: The 6.0 version introduces a new highlighting design where a user can control the row hover settings. You can change the color so that it fits the needs of your audience best or turn it off completely. MORE DETAILS FOR IN-DEPTH ANALYSES: Expand & collapse, drill down, drill into, expand all down or go to next level to get even more out of your data. Additionally, everything is now bookmarkable so you can seamlessly switch between different views within one visual. To learn more about the new visual, visit the product update page. Inforiver Enterprise SaaS Edition https://youtu.be/Zt06UTSU3Qs Inforiver Enterprise SaaS Edition delivers everything offered by Inforiver Premium, along with the following new capabilities: Ability to write back data to your own databases (Azure SQL, Azure Synapse, SQL Server, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, …) and shared drives (OneDrive, SharePoint). Scheduling & distributing formatted paginated reports as PDF, Excel, or Screenshot(MHTML) by email and to shared file drives Advanced commenting & collaboration at a cell, row & column level Ability to capture inputs for budget, forecasts, text comments, dropdown lists, dates in reading mode even by report viewers for write-back, snapshot reporting, tasks, notifications and enterprise themes are other key highlights. These capabilities are powered by azure SAAS services which are hosted and managed by Inforiver in the public multi-tenant cloud architecture. Inforiver Enterprise Matrix visual can be immediately purchased directly with Microsoft as it is integrated with Power BI’s new licensing and transactability API. All of these enterprise matrix capabilities are offered with your data encrypted both at rest and in transit. For customers who have specific data residency, security and governance – we also offer private & on-premises implementation. To learn more, visit our FAQ section. PowerGantt Chart by Nova Silva Earlier this year we introduced the PowerGantt Chart. We would like to thank you all for your excellent feedback and suggestions. One suggestion we received from several users was to add a custom-date-scale to the PowerGantt Chart. This would significantly increase the number of possibilities, because there are unlimited number of custom date/time scales, like: fiscal years, special week numbers, AM/PM split of the day, etc. Just after summer we released a new version of the PowerGantt containing this feature. You could already include unlimited number of tasks, hierarchy levels and milestones. Now every user of the PowerGantt can also define and include their own custom date scale. Because the definition of a custom-date-scale requires the setup of a date table, we have created an instruction video where you’ll learn how to create your own custom date scale in a couple of easy steps. You can find this tutorial video HERE. Don’t hesitate and try the PowerGantt Chart for FREE now on your own project/program data by downloading it from the AppSource. Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com/. Drill Down Network PRO by ZoomCharts Explore elaborate networks of category-based data using Drill Down Network PRO by ZoomCharts. This custom Power BI visual has no trouble turning your multi-level pie chart into an impressive network chart that automatically detects relations among categories. Interactive zooming and touch-driven selections help spot outliers and examine data in detail. Main features: Cross-chart filtering – eliminate slicers by selecting data points directly on the charts Category-based customization – choose node type, shape, color and font Link styling – configure 'from' and 'to' decorations and show link value Display up to 9 data categories Touch-input device friendly – explore data on any device Popular use cases: Accounting & Finance – show cost attribution Human Resources – analyze salary data by department Production – map production volumes by product or factory Sales & Marketing – visualize marketing campaigns ZoomCharts Drill Down Visuals are known for interactive drilldowns, smooth animations, and rich customization options. They support interactions, selections, custom and native tooltips, filtering, bookmarks, and context menu. Use them to create visually appealing and intuitive reports that business users will love on every device. To try Drill Down Network PRO now, get it from the AppSource! To see the full list of features, visit here! Other Update to release notes As we are approaching Wave 1 end, there are quite a few updates we wanted to call out to our roadmap. OneDrive/SharePoint integration including save and share from Desktop will start rolling out to a select few customers in the coming weeks. Once we have done sufficient testing, it will then roll out to other office rings which will not be until 2023. We will share updates of the roll out in the coming months so stay tuned Office installer will start roll out by the end of the year but will take some time to reach all E5 tenants. Expect more news coming in the coming months. On Object format and edit will roll out into preview to a few select customers and MVP’s. Whilst we would like to roll this out to all customers, due to the nature of the change, we have decided to give this more bake time and gather more feedback. The full public release date will be announced in future months Quick measure suggestions is shipping in the October Desktop release in experimental preview - see the section above for more information. A few of the Metrics features will ship in October rather than September 2022 Wave 2 release plan has gone through some updates (mainly on dates) and some carryovers from Wave 1. The roadmap will be updated hopefully by the end of this month, but we will publish what changed in the November blog post. That is all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback and do not forget to vote for other features that you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review. Also, don't forget to vote on your favorite feature this month over on our community website. As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!Metric visual is now available in preview
We are excited to announce that Metric visual is now available in preview in the Service! We are expanding the Scorecard visual we shipped last year to include the metric visual. This provides a huge level of flexibility in integrating metrics into your Power BI reporting solutions. You can now include individual metrics instead of the entire scorecard and create report pages showcasing metrics alongside other visuals, in the context of the rest of the report data. You can either create a new metric or add a metric from an existing scorecard as a visual in the report. nshot_showing_options_to_add_a_metric_visual You can create a metric by either entering values or connecting to data in reports you have access to. You can view notes, perform check-ins, set up rules on this metric just like on a regular scorecard. You can also format the metric visual to the look and feel of the rest of the report and it is configurable with options to turn the individual metric elements (such as targets, owner etc.) on/off. Please note that this visual will be made available in Desktop next month. In the coming updates, we are excited to add support for cross-filtering and connecting to data in the current report. The other updates we shipped for Metrics in last few weeks include: Move and copy scorecard Follow metrics Share link to a metric Move/copy scorecard Many organizations have 'template' scorecards that different departments or business groups might want to use as a starting point; Or you might want to develop a ‘test’ scorecard in My workspace to make sure the metrics are working correctly before moving it to the correct workspace when it’s ready to share. You can now do all this using the new move or copy scorecard functionality. You can move the entire scorecard with all the scorecard features and metadata including the check-ins, status rules as-is to a new workspace. You will be provided with a dropdown of a list of workspaces you have access to pick from. Copy scorecard has the option to include/exclude check-in history. This makes it easy to reuse the same scorecard for a newer time period (for example, for fiscal year scorecards) so you don't have to do this all over again. The copy scorecards capability is also useful in getting started quickly if you want to create a new scorecard by reusing the metric definition from an existing scorecard. Follow metrics You can now use the ‘Follow’ functionality to quickly access metrics you’re interested in and stay up to date on the activity on these metrics. You can follow metrics as you’re browsing through different scorecards and later access all your followed metrics in one place. You can view all the metrics you are following in the Metrics hub under the Following section. Clicking on a metric tile takes you to the scorecard containing the metric. This makes it easy to get a quick overview of the metrics you care about without having to navigate to different scorecards often. Once you follow a metric, you will get Teams notifications right in the activity feed and as a banner (toast card) whenever the metric definition is updated, a check-in is added or when an automated status rule changes the status of the metric. When you click the notification, the scorecard opens and the Details pane for the metric is shown. This Teams integration makes it easy to stay up to date about the metrics you follow without having to leave Teams to view the scorecards. Share link to a metric Often times you want to draw someone else's attention to a specific metric in a scorecard for them to take a look at it. Now, instead of having to @mention someone in a new check-in, you can reference a metric by simply sharing a direct link to it. When a metric is selected on a scorecard, the URL in the address bar is now updated with the metric ID. The link in the “Share” scorecard option also has been updated to include the metric ID if a metric is selected. When the recipient opens the link, they now will be able to view the scorecard with the details pane of that metric open. Please try out these features in preview. We greatly appreciate any feedback in terms of what you liked about the feature and how we can improve it. Please feel free to leave a comment on this blog with your thoughts. Thank you!Power BI June 2022 Feature Summary
Welcome to the June 2022 update. We are excited to announce the general availability of the new Format Pane, error bars and information protection updates, table navigation improvements, Connect to datamarts and Power BI Data Storytelling features. There is more to explore, please continue to read on. Reporting New Format Pane Updates to error bars Information protection updates Table navigation improvements Canvas Zoom in Teams and Quick create Modeling Composite models on SQL Server Analysis Services Data connectivity and preparation Connect to Datamarts (Preview) Anaplan (Connector Update) Azure Databricks (Connector Update) Databricks (New Connector) Dremio Cloud (Connector Update) FactSet Analytics (Connector Update) Hexagon PPM Smart API (Connector Update) SingleStore (New Connector) Snowflake (Connector Update) Vessel Insight (Connector Update) Workplace Analytics / Viva Insights (Connector Update) Service Power BI Data Storytelling Announcing the Data hub Power BI Metrics updates Embedded Analytics Hierarchy slicers support in JS APIs Support embedding Paginated Report with data sources containing single sign on (SSO) Support passing report parameters for Paginated Reports in JS SDK Power BI Embedded enables data model enhancements for ISVs/App owners' customers with DirectQuery for Power BI datasets Service principal profile Developers Define the privileged permissions your visual is requesting in the capabilities.json Improving the custom visual load time Visualizations New visuals in AppSource Milestone Trend Analysis Chart by Nova Silva Inforiver Premium Edition now certified Zebra BI Cards 1.2 Drill Down Waterfall PRO by ZoomCharts Other Coming Soon: Dataverse Display Name Support Power BI Desktop infrastructure update (WebView2) Improved support for single sign-on (SSO) for all users Check out the video below for this month's summary: https://youtu.be/gu_5Q3z-qpc Reporting New Format Pane The new format pane is now generally available! This has also been shipped to the PBI Service. Thank you to all that have been providing valuable feedback throughout the preview to help us get to this point. This does not mean the improvements stop here. We’re still actively listening to your comments, please add those directly to this blog post or the community forum here. Improvements made this month: Fixed a blocking bug to ensure analytics pane works for custom visuals where applicable. Fixed a bug that removed log scale applied to the horizontal axis. This affected line, area, stacked area, combo, or scatter charts set prior to April 2022 reports. The issue has now been resolved. When changing a blank page to tooltip size, we automatically flip the “allow use as tooltip” toggle on to save you a step! Updates to error bars This month, you’ll notice that we’ve revamped the error bars card in the Analytics pane to simplify the structure of the formatting options. With fewer sub-cards to have to scroll through, you can more easily find and customize the various elements you want to see on your error bars. The major changes are that line options have now been moved into the Error band sub card, and marker options have also now moved into the bar and band cards. Information protection updates In Power BI Desktop, you can establish a live connection to a shared dataset in the Power BI service and create many different reports from the same dataset. If the dataset has a sensitivity label, Power BI will automatically apply the live dataset’s sensitivity label to the PBIX file to maintain the data’s classification and protection as it leaves the Power BI service. To learn more, check out our documentation. Table navigation improvements This month, we are excited to announce several enhancements to the table visual for existing and new reports to improve performance, usability, and accessibility for all users. These updates include: Overall performance improvements for scrolling and rendering, as well as the look and feel of grid lines and selection styles New keyboard shortcuts for easier navigation, including SHIFT UP/DOWN ARROW to select multiple contiguous rows, PAGE UP/DOWN for scrolling, and HOME/END to move focus to the first/last cell in the current row Enhanced row selection experience that includes a left indicator and improved contrast to help distinguish selected rows from non-selected rows A new two-toned focus outline so on any color background, the focus will always be visible even on darker themes meeting color contrast requirements Updated conditional formatting icons that are conformant with color contrast requirements and now announces alternative text with screen readers The ability to associate images with alternative (alt) text in the formatting pane to describe images to blind and low vision users Learn more about consuming Power BI reports using accessibility features. Canvas Zoom in Teams and Quick create Last month we shipped the canvas zoom feature to Desktop and Service. This feature is now also available for Power BI in Teams and Quick create! For report readers, this is especially important for improving readability. For report creators, this helps magnify the canvas to make pixel perfect tweaks. Users can drag the slider to set the zoom level or click on the zoom % to launch the zoom level dialog and type in a custom input. Use the new quick “fit to page” button to get back to the default view. Note: the zoom level is not saved with the report. 22_Feature_Summary Modeling Composite models on SQL Server Analysis Services We are excited to announce you can create composite Power BI models by connecting to SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services tabular models! SQL Server 2022 is available now for public preview and when you upgrade or deploy tabular models to SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services this DirectQuery connection becomes available in Power BI Desktop starting with May 2022 release. Existing or new tabular models hosted on SQL Server 2022 Analysis Services can be joined with other data in Power BI Desktop to create a composite model. Read more in this blog. Data connectivity and preparation Connect to Datamarts (Preview) As a refresher, Datamarts in Power BI was officially announced in May 2022 as a new Power BI Premium self-service capability that enables users to perform relational database analytics and uncover actionable insights from their data. Please find more information about datamart in Power BI. You can now easily discover and connect to Datamarts from the “Data hub” within the Power BI Desktop Ribbon. This feature allows users to discover datamarts that have already been created and reuse them to easily build reports. You will be able to see datamarts that you have created or were shared with you by others in the organization. This will connect you to the datamart’s underlying auto-generated dataset (using live connect) so that you can easily create reports. To create datasets on top of the datamart, you can use the Azure SQL database connector and specify the Datamart’s SQL connection string for Server name. If you created the datamart, you can get the SQL Connection string from datamart settings (context menu action from the datamart in your workspace). If this datamart was shared with you, you can get the SQL connection string from the Datamart info page below from the Data Hub (in Power BI Service). Up next, we will simplify the experience to connect to the datamart’s SQL endpoint so that advanced use cases can be easily served without the hassle of having to find the connection string. Anaplan (Connector Update) The Anaplan connector has been updated. Below are release notes from the Anaplan team. Bug fixes/Improvements: This version of Anaplan connector for Power BI supports Anaplan OAuth APIs for authenticating with Anaplan. Users will be able to use either Basic Authentication (User ID, Password) or the Anaplan configured IDP for logging into Anaplan from the connector, accessing & running Export actions. With this new connector option, customers do not need to be an Anaplan exception user to use Power BI. Azure Databricks (Connector Update) The Azure Databricks connector has been updated. Below are release notes from the Databricks team. Fast evaluation option is removed from the UI and is used by default now. We made some performance improvements. Databricks (New Connector) We are releasing a new Databricks connector. Below are release notes from the Databricks team. This release contains a preview generic datasource `Databricks (Beta)` which supports OAuth authentication on AWS. The OAuth on AWS preview will support users managed by Databricks directly. Dremio Cloud (Connector Update) The Dremio Cloud connector has been updated. Below are release notes from the Dremio team. Users can now connect PowerBI Service to Dremio without needing Power BI Gateway Some customers may experience a back compatibility issue with their existing connections and reports. They may need to re-enter their credentials and possibly recreate existing reports once they have upgraded to this new connector. FactSet Analytics (Connector Update) The FactSet Analytics connector has been updated. Below are release notes from the FactSet team. Minor internal fixes for table representation Hexagon PPM Smart API (Connector Update) The Hexagon PPM Smart API connector has been updated. Below are release notes from the Hexagon team. This update contains a fix resolving an issue where Okta authentication no longer worked with the WebView2 browser control. SingleStore (New Connector) We are excited to announce the SingleStore Power BI connector! Below are release notes from the SingleStore team. SingleStore is the world's fastest database for all data-intensive applications. SingleStore provides a single unified database for analytical and transactional workloads with multi-model support for text, geospatial, time-series and more. The SingleStore Power BI connector provides a live connection to the database with support for DirectQuery as well as the ability to import data into Power BI with standard and Custom SQL Import modes. Snowflake (Connector Update) The Snowflake connector has been updated. This update contains a minor bug fix around mixed case database names and quotations causing compilation errors. Vessel Insight (Connector Update) The Vessel Insight connector has been updated. Please find update notes below from the Vessel Insight team. The new update in the connector enables a user to navigate through fleets with different asset trees when applicable and only sensors with data will be visible. Vessel Insight has a new version of the asset tree where the hierarchy structure has been updated. It is now possible to navigate through the old and the new asset tree or more, while the previous version of the connector only allows the user to navigate through one asset structure. Sensors without data will be hidden and ensure the user when selecting sensors for import that there will be no empty sensors. Workplace Analytics / Viva Insights (Connector Update) The Workplace Analytics connector has been updated and renamed. Please find below notes from the team. We’ve updated the Workplace Analytics connector and rebranded it as Viva Insights. The updated connector is now generally available. The connector includes a new optional parameter, which lets you import raw query output from certain data sources. Service Power BI Data Storytelling Last month we announced the public preview of Power BI Data Storytelling – an exciting new integration between Power BI and PowerPoint. Power BI Data storytelling is a PowerPoint add-in developed by the Power BI team, which lets you add Power BI reports into PowerPoint slides and enjoy the delightful interactive experience of Power BI inside your presentations. With data storytelling, data will always be up to date in your slides, whether you’re building a presentation or presenting it live to others. This month we are enabling Storytelling starting points inside the Power BI report experience, making it easy and simple for you to get started with storytelling directly from the report you want to use in your presentation. First, open the report you wish to add to your presentation, navigate to the desired page, and make any data selection that reflects the view you want to use. Then, click Share>PowerPoint or Export>PowerPoint>Embed live data. Check the “Embed report with data filters you selected” box if you want to make sure that the same report state will be added to the presentation. This will open a new window, with two options: Option 1: copy the link and paste into a Power BI add-in you added to an existing presentation. Option 2: open a new presentation with the report automatically added to it and continue to build your presentation. Read this blog to learn more on how you can enhance PowerPoint storytelling with data by including Power BI reports directly into a presentation with just few clicks. Announcing the Data hub We’re excited to announce the Data hub! The Data hub is the evolution of the Datasets Hub that was announced in December-2020. In the Data hub, in addition to Power BI datasets, you can now find the newly released Datamarts. The Data hub is a central location for data owners, report creators, and report consumers to manage, discover and reuse data items across all workspaces. Data item owners can see usage metrics, refresh status, related reports, lineage, and impact analysis to help monitor and manage their data items. Report creators can use the hub to find suitable items to build their reports on and use links to easily create the reports. Report consumers can use the hub to find reports based on trustworthy data items. A major challenge we hear from customers about is that users often build similar data repeatedly, resulting in resource overload, governance complexity, and difficulty in identifying sources of truth. The Data hub addresses these challenges by making it easier for users to discover existing, quality data and reuse it to answer business questions and gain insights. Once you discover a data item that seems to have the right data, a click on the item opens the data details page. On the details page you can see the following: Metadata about the data item, including description, endorsement, and sensitivity label. Actions such as share, refresh, create new, and more. Related reports, which are reports that were built on top of the dataset/datamart. When we think about data discovery best practices, before creating new reports, users should look at the existing related reports. If there are no such reports that are suitable, there are multiple ways to create a new report: Create report from template, if a template has been defined (a template is defined by adding the suffix “(template)” to a report built on top of the dataset/datamart). Create report from scratch to open a blank canvas and start creating your report. Auto-create a report. Note: This is currently supported only for single-table datasets. Moving forward, we’ll be adding support for datasets with multiple tables. Create a formatted table. Read more about this new functionality. Data hub in Power BI Desktop Power BI report creators primarily use Power BI Desktop to build new content and then publish it to the Power BI service. When building new reports, instead of connecting to external data sources, the best practice is to connect to curated data available to them in Power BI. In Power BI Desktop, just as in the Power BI service, we would like to bring all Power BI data items into a single experience. For this reason, we’ve brought the Data hub into Power BI Desktop. With the Data hub, users can find datasets and datamarts side by side, filter and search to find the data they need, and then connect to create a report. Read more about how to connect to datamarts in the Connect to datamarts section of this blog post under “Data connectivity and preparation” section. Power BI Metrics updates We have a number of exciting updates to announce for Power BI metrics (feature formerly known as 'goals'). This month, we have additions of multiple milestones that allow you to add date associated milestones within a given metric, categorical metrics that help you track non-numerical items, and enrichment of the bulk updating feature. We are also happy to announce that Power BI Metrics now supports customer managed keys. Milestones Milestones is a highly anticipated feature that we are so excited to announce. Now, date associated milestones can be added to a metric to help track incremental progress toward an overall end goal. With this new feature, scorecards support more nuanced tracking scenarios such as cumulative monthly targets, stepped revenue goals, and more. Each milestone you set is associated with a date so that you can accurately track your progress in your scorecard the way you do in the rest of your organization. In the setup process, you will have the flexibility to select whether you want to display the next milestone or the final target for your metric on the scorecard. This can be customized per metric. You can see the milestones as well as the final target visualized in the details pane alongside your current progress, so that it’s easier than ever to get a snapshot of how you’re performing against your metrics. Categorical Metrics Begin to track metrics that are not numerical. With categorical metrics, scorecards support scenarios like accessibility, NPS category scores (detractor, promotor, etc.), and many more! To get started, select categorical from the floating formatting bar when choosing the current and target values. You will be able to select from existing lists of categories, or create new categories as I am doing here, with accessibility scores. After creating my categories, I can then fill out my current and target values with the appropriate selections. And here you can see a group of metrics with accessibility scores B-D, with final targets of A. Bulk Updating With new additions to bulk updating, you will be able to: Assign owners Update statuses (if no rules exist) Create new or replace existing status rules Update start dates Update due dates Embedded Analytics Hierarchy slicers support in JS APIs Slicers in Power BI are a type of on canvas visual filters. The slicers enable a user to sort and filter a packed report and view only the information they want. The ISVs and developers can now interact with hierarchy slicers using slicer APIs in JS APIs. Using the slicer APIs, you can get and set the state of a Power BI slicer. In addition, you can use load configuration to change the slicer state when loading a report. Support embedding Paginated Report with data sources containing single sign on (SSO) Partners and customers can now automate Power BI Embedded paginated reports with data sources containing SSO support in the following scenario: When the data source has the SSO option enabled and your users access reports built atop the data source, Power BI sends the related identity blob, which was received through the GenerateTokenV2 request in the queries, to the data source. This option enables Power BI to respect the security settings that are configured at the data source level. Example of generating an embed token for a paginated report with a data source identity. Support passing report parameters for Paginated Reports in JS SDK Now developers can set up parameters to paginated reports in Power BI by passing them in the Payload settings through JS SDK. They can further customize how Power BI processes the paginated report by embedding parameters for filtering data that meets the parameters criteria. Read more in our documentation. Power BI Embedded enables data model enhancements for ISVs/App owners' customers with DirectQuery for Power BI datasets Power BI Embedded ISVs and app owners can now enable their customers to create their own specific dataset that can be combined with a central dataset that ISVs/App owners use for all their customers. The customers can combine their own data coming from any datasource connected to PBI in any fashion (including with SSO enabled for supported datasources) and create their own measures and calculations. For example, ISVs can let their tenant customers create tenant specific measures via their code, using TOM over XMLA to the customer tenant specific dataset. To embed Power BI report with a dataset which has a Direct Query connection to another Power BI dataset two separate things need to be done: In Power BI portal, set the “XMLA endpoint” to “Read Only” or “Read Write” in the dataset’s capacity – this only needs to be done once per capacity. Generate a Multi-Resource Embed Token with all relevant dataset IDs specified in the request and the XmlaPermissions set to ReadOnly. Service principal profile Until now, ISVs and other Power BI Embedded app owners were able to deploy the embedded solution to production by using one of the following 2 options: Create one service principal for all their customers, where they have a Power BI limit of 1,000 workspaces per each service principal Create one service principal per each customer, where they have the burden of managing thousands of service principals Now, we’ve added a new method that allows a much larger number of customers per one service principal by introducing a new entity named service principal profile. Each service principal profile can administer a customer, and the number of profiles per service principal can reach hundreds of thousands. The service principal profile allows the ISV to build a scalable application that enables better customer data isolation and establishes tighter security boundaries between customers. Using the service principal profile enables the ISV application to host multiple customers on a single Power BI tenant. Each profile represents one customer in Power BI. In other words, each profile creates and manages datasets, reports, dashboards, and other artifacts that are connected only to one specific customer's data. Check out this video for more information. Please use the following resources to learn more about the service principal profile in Power BI Embedded: Service principal profiles in Power BI Embedded Migrate multi-customer applications to the service principal profiles model Power BI REST APIs - Profiles Developers Define the privileged permissions your visual is requesting in the capabilities.json Starting from API 4.6 and above developers must declare any privileged API calls their visual requires access to operate. These currently include: web access and downloading to a file from the custom visual. These privileges are granted in the capabilities.json file and will be displayed in the "About" dialog in the desktop and web when in edit model. The visual will be permitted to access any special privileges only if it was predefined in the capabilities.json. Admin may enable custom visuals downloading files through a tenant setting. New APIs are introduced to allow visuals to query the host at runtime to determine which of the privileges is enabled. Improving the custom visual load time With API 4.6 we have improved the load time for custom visuals considerably. Please make sure to update your visuals to the latest and greatest releases to enjoy the most recent enhancements. Visualizations New visuals in AppSource The following are new visuals this update: Mapbox Custom visual SCvation-Flow-Basic 2WriteBack Easy SPC Milestone Trend Analysis Chart by Nova Silva Milestones in project management are points in time when important deliverables are due. Like begin/end dates of project phases, formal approvals, etc. Nothing new to most of us. How can we use milestones to monitor the progress of our project(s)? The Milestone Trend Analysis Chart for Power BI. Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) is a simple method of early identifying deadline trends. It allows you to react in time with corrective actions. And it will raise the deadline awareness of all project participants and stakeholders. Key signals in the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart are: Horizontal line: no change in the (expected) completion date Increasing line: delay in the (expected) completion date Decreasing line: (expected) completion date brought forward All features of the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart are available in the familiar standard Power BI user interface. No need to learn a new interface. And of course, themes, interactive selection and tooltips are supported. Don’t hesitate and try the Milestone Trend Analysis Chart now on your own data by downloading it from the AppSource. All features are available for free to evaluate this visual within Power BI Desktop. Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com/. Inforiver Premium Edition now certified Inforiver Premium Edition, which delivers the fastest way to build Power BI reports, is now Microsoft Power BI Certified. The latest release incorporates several new features and enhancements and is available for download at Microsoft AppSource. The Premium Edition leverages a no-code/low-code architecture to deliver a wide variety of use cases Paginated reports Management, financial & IBCS variance reports Graphical tables (in-cell visualizations) Pivot analysis with expand and collapse for both row and columns Excel-like formulae at rows, columns, cell for visual-level calculations Manual data entry for plan, forecast or comments/cell level annotations What-if simulations with popular distributions and spread methods Formatted export to Excel/PDF Additional use cases such as writeback, paginated report subscription scheduling, and collaborative cell level commenting are available but in the enterprise edition. Inforiver Premium Edition is completely free for Power BI Desktop, with no feature restrictions. Inforiver pricing has also been simplified for wider adoption. Key enhancements in this 1.5 release include: KPI Explorer / Slicer for Data Exploration New Chart Types Column Pinning & Freeze Column Filtering Show Measure on Rows UX enhancements Display and Formatting enhancements … and more For more details on the latest release, visit the Inforiver Community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ft5QVgPBY0 Zebra BI Cards 1.2 The 1.2 version of the Zebra BI Cards visual brings some exciting new features like the ability to display the year-to-date (YTD) value for the KPIs, more flexibility with different font settings for elements on the cards, and new interaction settings. All of this to make your reports even more actionable, flexible, and insightful! https://youtu.be/tGrGNrZUwH8 Year-to-date value With Zebra BI Cards 1.2 a user can now choose to display the YTD value for the KPIs. In practice, this brings several benefits: Seamlessly switch between different stages for each KPI: YTD total, total and last data point. Easily compare data with the same period last year Put your data in perspective by having all information about KPI performance on one page. Font settings To create even more flexible reports, users can now apply their preferred font settings, like font style, size, and color. Card elements like KPI title, value, variances, and chart labels can be customized separately. Interaction settings By adding the Interaction group of settings, the report designers now have more control over which interaction is allowed to the end-user once the report is published. Discover other new features and improvements on our website. Drill Down Waterfall PRO by ZoomCharts Drill Down Waterfall PRO is a custom waterfall visual for Power BI. Now you can create stunning waterfall charts using vast customization options to control the look and feel of the chart. End users will find it easy to explore data using on-chart interactions, such as interactive zooming and clickable drilldowns. Main features: Column sequence – set the display order for the columns. Sub-totals – set display values in the dataset or let the visual calculate them automatically. Rich customization options – customize increasing, decreasing, and totals series separately (colors, outlines, column widths, column connectors, value labels and more). Static and dynamic thresholds – set up to 4 thresholds to demonstrate targets. Touch device friendly – explore data on mouse and touch input devices. Popular use cases: Accounting & finance – profit and loss statements. Inventory management – opening stock, stock movement, and closing stock. Human resources – change in staff numbers over time. ZoomCharts Drill Down Visuals are known for their interactive drilldowns, smooth animations, and rich customization options. They support interactions, selections, custom and native tooltips, filtering, bookmarks, and context menu. Use them to create visually appealing and intuitive reports that business users will absolutely love on every device. Try Drill Down Waterfall PRO now by downloading the visual from AppSource. Learn More about Drill Down Waterfall PRO by ZoomCharts. Other Coming Soon: Dataverse Display Name Support With next month’s release, we’re planning to support display names through the Dataverse connector. Once released, you’ll see display names automatically applied to all columns in the model when creating reports using the Dataverse connector, in either Import or DQ mode. This should save Dataverse users a lot of time, as you won’t need to manually name every column to match the friendly names end users are accustomed to seeing in their applications, like Dynamics. However, we did want to give everyone advanced warning of this change, as there will be some impact on existing reports once the change rolls out. For all existing reports, you’ll need to open the report up in Power BI Desktop and refresh the model for display names to show up. On the first schema refresh, the display names will override any existing renames you’ve made in the report, so if you want to retain those unique names, you’ll need to manually reapply your name changes in the model. This will only happen when the display names are first applied, so future schema refreshes should not require any rework. Overall, this change should reduce the amount of manual work you have to do to make your reports based on Dataverse data easily readable and familiar for your report consumers, so look forward to learning all the details of display name support in next month’s post! Power BI Desktop infrastructure update (WebView2) Thanks for your patience while we switch to WebView2 as part of the infrastructure update. As we are getting closer to GA we want to make sure we have solved as many issues as possible. Starting with this release you will see the following warning every time you launch Power BI Desktop if you don’t have WebView2 installed yet. If you see this, please install WebView2 and enable it. Read how in this blog. Improved support for single sign-on (SSO) for all users Power BI Desktop will now prompt users to sign in and use SSO where applicable to better align with office. This is the first of many small tweaks the startup experience. In future updates, we will use signed in users to deliver more tailored experiences and allow users to consume files from the service. That is all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback and do not forget to vote for other features that you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review. Also, don't forget to vote on your favorite feature this month over on our community website. As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
