Welcome to the Power BI May 2023 update!

We have lots of exciting new features for you this month. With the announcement of Microsoft Fabric, you’ll find a featured section on all of the new features released! See Arun Ulagaratchagan’s blog post to read the full Microsoft Fabric Preview announcement.

You’ll also find the preview announcement of new Open, Save, and Share options when working with files in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries, updates to the On-Object Interaction feature released to Preview in March, a new feature that gives authors the ability to define query limits in Desktop, data model editing in the Power BI Service, and updates to the Power BI Tabs in Microsoft Teams.

There is more to explore in Reporting, Modeling, Data Connectivity, Service, Paginated Reports, Developers, visualizations, and other announcements so please continue to read on!

Special Announcements for Microsoft Fabric!

Reporting

Special Announcements for Microsoft Fabric!

Power BI Direct Lake mode is in public preview

We have some very exciting news to share with you today! We are thrilled to announce that we have just launched the public preview of Direct Lake mode for Power BI datasets on Fabric Lakehouses! We plan to launch the public preview for Direct Lake mode datasets on Fabric Warehouses soon. For now, Direct Lake mode datasets for Warehouse is in private preview, but it does take effect if you use the SQL Endpoint for Lakehouse.

Fabric is taking a bold bet on open data formats in OneLake. In addition to avoiding vendor lock-in, One Copy of data shared across the Fabric analytical engines means customers will dramatically reduce data silos and data integration costs. Power BI is adopting Delta Lake and Parquet its native storage format. By querying data directly from the lake, Power BI datasets enjoy blazing fast query performance on a par with Import storage mode without having to duplicate data or manage refreshes!

Until now, dataset creators had to choose between Import and DirectQuery mode for data access. Import mode delivers blazing-fast performance but Power BI must first copy the data during refresh. Any changes at the source are only picked up with the next data refresh. DirectQuery mode avoids having to copy data, but typically suffers performance degradation by having to submit federated queries to other database systems that are not as efficient for BI-style queries. Direct Lake mode combines the advantages of Import mode and DirectQuery: query performance on a par with Import without having to copy data or manage refreshes.

Direct Lake is a fast path to query data directly from the lake for your Lakehouse/Warehouse. The data volumes for Direct Lake mode far exceed the per-dataset memory limits for Import models in Power BI Premium Gen2. Building near real-time BI solutions to unlock massive data has never been easier. Just go to your Lakehouse or Warehouse in Fabric, click on the New Power BI Dataset button, select the tables you want to include, and click Confirm. Open the data model to create measures and relationships as you would for any other Power BI dataset. Lastly click the new report button and create beautiful Power BI reports! Note the integrated experience from data in the lake through to report creation without leaving the browser or performing a refresh!

Don’t miss this opportunity to take your BI solutions to the next level with Direct Lake mode for Power BI datasets in Fabric. Check out the articles in the product documentation for a quick start. Direct Lake mode opens a fundamental new way for analyzing very large data volumes in Power BI. Try it now!! Provide us with feedback! And stay tuned for more announcements related to Direct Lake mode in the coming months!

The Azure Analysis Services to Fabric and Power BI Premium Migration Experience is now GA!

Also known as the Azure Analysis Services to Premium Migration Experience, we are thrilled to announce it is now generally available! Migrate semantic models from Azure Analysis Services (AAS) all the way to Fabric, Power BI Premium or Power BI Embedded in just a few clicks! Additionally, redirect existing reports to the migrated dataset. This not only delivers a seamless migration experience that minimizes impact to downstream users, reports, and automation processes, it also enables you to take advantage of the many benefits of Fabric and Power BI as a superset of AAS, such as richer capabilities and higher scalability. Power BI offers a modern, cloud BI platform that goes far beyond comparable functionality available in AAS or SSAS. In Power BI, your enterprise BI solutions can scale dynamically, are straightforward to manage, and perhaps most importantly are secure and easily sharable and discoverable within and across organizations. Migrating from AAS to Power BI is aligned with the Microsoft product roadmap and is a future-proof investment.

While the migration of production solutions requires careful preparation, the actual steps to migrate from AAS to Power BI couldn’t be more convenient. Just launch the Azure AS Migration Experience as in the following animated illustration, create a new migration, connect to your Azure subscription, select the AAS server and database that you want to migrate, connect to your workspace on Power BI Premium or create a new one, select the desired ADLS Gen 2 storage account, and you are off to the races. You can monitor the migration progress and status while the migration experience performs the actual work for you.

The ability to redirect XMLA-based clients and rebind Power BI reports to the migrated dataset is perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to use the Migration Experience for your Azure AS migrations. The above animation already shows you how to redirect XMLA-based clients with a single mouse click. Equally convenient, you can redirect all the Power BI reports that use a migrated dataset from within the migration experience. As the following screenshot illustrates, you can also verify the rebind status of your reports and revert the rebinding if you wanted to redirect your reports back to the original dataset on Azure AS. Perhaps you only wanted to evaluate the migration experience using a temporary target workspace first before launching the actual migration effort in your production environment.

After the actual migration is complete, your users can continue to use their existing reports without disruption. You can also access your migrated dataset by using any tool or application that supports XMLA protocol. You can also create reports and dashboards using Power BI Desktop or Service. And you can now take your datasets to the next level by leveraging the numerous exciting features and unique capabilities that Power BI has to offer, including:

Large dataset storage format: This feature enables datasets up to 400 GB in size with improved performance and reliability.
Incremental refresh: This feature allows you to refresh only the data that has changed since the last refresh, reducing processing time and resource consumption.
Aggregations: This feature allows you to combine data from different sources and granularity levels, such as direct query and import modes, to optimize query performance and reduce costs.
Composite models: This feature allows you to combine multiple datasets into a single logical model, enabling cross-report drill-through and flexible data modeling scenarios.
XMLA endpoints: This feature allows you to connect to Power BI datasets using any tool or application that supports XMLA protocol, such as Excel, SSMS, SSIS, or third-party tools.

And there you have it! The Azure AS to Power BI Premium Migration Experience is now GA with full production support. So, don’t delay and migrate your Azure AS data models today! It is the right step to keep your enterprise BI solutions on a future-proof platform. Power BI is the leading platform for both self-service and enterprise BI, with exponential growth in data volumes and complexity. It is built on the same mature BI data modeling technology as Azure AS and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), which means you can leverage your existing skills, tools, and processes when migrating to Power BI. Power BI also inherits a large ecosystem of developers, partners, BI tools, and solutions that were built up over decades.

Here are some quick links you may find useful:

- Azure AS migration main page: https://aka.ms/AASMigration
- Azure AS migration guide: https://aka.ms/AASMigrationGuide
- Azure AS migration scenarios: https://aka.ms/AASMigrationScenarios

Optimize ribbon in Power BI Desktop is now GA!

We are excited to announce the general availability of the Optimize ribbon in Power BI Desktop. The Optimize ribbon can help you improve your report authoring experience with three main features: Pause visuals, Optimization presets, and the Apply all slicers button.

Pause visuals can stop visuals from sending queries when you are making changes. This can speed up your report design process, especially if you are using DirectQuery table storage mode. You can refresh individual visuals or all the visuals on a report page when you are ready.

Optimization presets lets you apply different report setting combinations to favor either Query Reduction or Interactivity between your visuals with one click. You can even use the Customize option to pick and choose which settings best suits your reporting needs. Optimization presets are particularly useful for large models and DirectQuery reports that require fine-tuning of performance and user experience.

Apply all slicers button stops slicers from instantly applying their selections when this button is added to a report page. This will reduce the number of times the other visuals refresh while report consumers are making selections across multiple slicers.

Try these features out today!

To learn more about the Optimize ribbon and how to use these features, check out the documentation:

And these earlier blog posts:

Hybrid tables is now GA!

We have some exciting news for those of you who build advanced Power BI datasets. Hybrid Tables, an advanced partitioning feature that lets you combine import mode and DirectQuery mode in a single table, is now GA! This means that your production solutions can now have fast performance for historical data stored in import-mode partitions, and real-time data freshness for your latest data queried in DirectQuery mode. The animated visualization below shows an example. This also means that you can define an incremental refresh policy with real-time data to generate a hybrid partitioning scheme automatically in your production datasets. For details about configuring an incremental refresh policy with real-time data, refer to the article Incremental refresh and real-time data for datasets in the product documentation.

We hope you are as excited as we are about Hybrid Tables in Power BI Premium. With Hybrid Tables, you can analyze massive datasets with billions of rows interactively, while keeping up with the latest changes in your data source seamlessly. Of course, you can also create a reverse partitioning scheme with less frequently analyzed historic data in DirectQuery mode while providing the more frequently analyzed recent data in import mode for blazing fast analysis. Stay tuned for more optimizations to come in the future targeting specifically this historic partitioning scenario. To learn more about Hybrid Tables, check out the Hybrid Tables content in the product documentation.

Azure Log Analytics for Power BI Datasets is now GA!

We are pleased to announce the General Availability of Power BI integration with Azure Log Analytics. During public preview (announced here), this feature proved to be very useful for administrators to analyze their detailed historical activity and independently perform diagnostics on their dataset activities.

However, until now this feature was limited to a single workspace per log analytics workspace. In other words, you could not connect multiple Power BI workspaces to a single log analytics workspace. This meant you had to create a new log analytics workspace for each Power BI workspace or selectively decide which workspace you wanted to analyze. With this announcement, we have lifted the limitation and customers can now connect multiple workspaces to a single log analytics workspace:

With this added capability, administrators now can have full and detailed visibility into any Power BI Premium dataset usage, performance, and metrics running in their premium capacities in near real time.

Query Log Analytics with KQL

Using the Log Analytics query interface admins have the possibility to write queries using the powerful Kusto Query Language and get instant results from massive amounts of data. Here’s an example that counts the number of queries, users, CPU Average and Duration Average per workspace:

PowerBIDatasetsWorkspace
| where TimeGenerated > ago(30d)
| where OperationName == “QueryEnd”
| summarize QueryCount=count()
, Users = dcount(ExecutingUser)
, AvgCPU = avg(CpuTimeMs)
, AvgDuration = avg(DurationMs)
by PowerBIWorkspaceId

Insights with Power BI Template

Admins can also use the previous released Power BI report template to connect to Log Analytics and get historical insights for dataset usage and performance data:

In summary, Log Analytics provides admins with a unique way to:

Visualize historical data over long periods to observe usage trends, spot periods of unusual load, and identify performance degradation.
Isolate activities by time range, capacity, dataset, user, report and more.
Troubleshoot query and dataset refresh performance, by investigating internal operations and identifying where time is being spent.
Correlate DAX Queries with the origin Power BI Reports and Visuals
Deep dive on Power BI Premium dataset overloads

Automation with REST APIs

With General Availability we will also allow admins to automate the connection of Power BI Workspaces to Log Analytics Workspace using the UpdateGroup Admin REST API, allowing admins to automate creation of the connection to Log Analytics. This is an important capability for large enterprise customers and ISVs who may have to frequently create new workspaces. Refer to this sample PowerShell script to learn how to do it.

To learn more about Log Analytics and Power BI, check out our documentation.

Power BI data hub reimagined and rebranded as OneLake data hub

Data hub is already the central location for discovering, managing, and reusing data. With the introduction of Fabric, there are more data types available, and the OneLake data hub is expanding to support all Fabric data items, including Data warehouses, Lakehouses, their related SQL endpoints, KQL databases, Datamarts, and Datasets. As part of the Fabric release, the data hub is rebranded as the “OneLake data hub”. OneLake data hub serves as the interface to all data in OneLake, enabling users to effortlessly discover and manage their OneLake data.

We are pleased to announce another major enhancement that addresses customer requests related to the data hub experience. The new OneLake data hub Explorer enables users to quickly and easily locate the right data items while browsing through the list of workspaces where they have data items inside. The OneLake data hub Explorer is particularly powerful for users who have access to data across multiple workspaces, including those with tens or more workspaces. By providing an intuitive and efficient way to browse through and locate data items, the Explorer makes it easier for users to work with large volumes of data and derive valuable insights. In the Explorer pane, users can see all of the workspaces in which they have access to data, and clicking on a workspace name scopes the data to that workspace only.

The OneLake data hub is accessible on Power BI Service, Power BI Desktop, and in all Fabric workloads.

Power BI Lineage and impact analysis support all Fabric items

With the release of Fabric, Power BI workspaces now include many new items and BI projects often span across multiple items with many dependencies. We are pleased to announce that the lineage view feature is expanding (now in Public Preview) to support all Fabric items. This will enable users to see how data flows from source to destination across all items, for example, how a pipeline injects data into a lakehouse and then into its related warehouses, datasets, and reports.

To help users better understand the long chain of dependencies across workspaces, we are also improving the impact analysis experience. This will allow users to see all downstream items through the chain, in addition to the direct child items.

Overall, these enhancements to the Power BI workspace Lineage view will improve data visibility and management, making it easier for users to work with complex BI projects and ensure that data is flowing smoothly across all items.

Announcing the renaming of the Power BI Free user license

With respect to the introduction of Microsoft Fabric, the Power BI Free user license is now the Microsoft Fabric Free user license.

This minor change requires no preparation as all functionalities that the Power BI Free user license previously offered, still remain. The renaming of the license serves only to reflect inclusion within Microsoft Fabric.

New Fabric Connectors

We are excited to make a series of special announcements about Data Connectivity! We have a new Get Data category and are releasing three new connectors which will appear within the “Fabric” category:

New Get Data Category: Fabric

We are releasing a new category in Get Data experiences which will contain data sources from Microsoft Fabric.

The following connectors will appear in the “Fabric” category, in addition to the “Power Platform” category.

- - Dataflows
  - Power BI Datasets
  - Datamarts

Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric (New Connector)

The Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric connector allows teams to connect to their Delta tables created in the Fabric Lakehouse. It also gives teams the ability to directly discover and connect to all their files in OneLake. With this new connector, teams can easily visualize their Lakehouse data to gain more business insights.

Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric (New Connector)

The Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric connector allows teams to connect to their warehouse data living in Microsoft Fabric. With the connector, teams can use the SQL endpoint to get data, write native queries and get more understanding of their data trends.

KQL database in Microsoft Fabric (New Connector)

The KQL database in Microsoft Fabric connector allows teams to connect to their KQL databases data living in Microsoft Fabric. With the connector, teams can use Query URI to connect to their KQL database and get valuable insights into their data.

Reporting

Azure Maps is now Generally Available

The Azure Maps visual is now Generally Available! Since releasing the visual for private preview over a year ago, we’ve added a variety of powerful customization options to help bring it up to par with our current Map visual. These additions include support for location name fields (geocoding), pie chart layers, filled map layers, and more.

With this release, you’ll find a couple more changes as we continue to improve the visual.

First, when you open a report with an existing Map visual and Azure Maps is enabled for your organization, you’ll see a window pop up encouraging you to upgrade your Map to an Azure Map.

As you might have been able to infer since the release of the visual’s public preview, we are focusing our development efforts on Azure Maps as the single first-party map visual in Power BI. In fact, in a future release, we will fully deprecate our older map visuals and migrate even existing reports over to Azure Maps in order to truly unify all of our map visuals into one. However, we encourage you to convert your Maps to Azure Maps now. This will make sure that you get all the new features we ship in the future as soon as we ship them, and that your transition is as seamless as possible.

Second, we’re updating the style of all of our map tiles, including in the Azure Maps visual.

Current Style	New Style

Since this will affect all reports, including existing reports, we are rolling this change out to users over time, so keep an eye out for the new style in your own reports and send us feedback early if you encounter any issues.

While we’ve reached General Availability, our investment in Azure Maps won’t slow down here! We still have even more features and improvements planned for the visual in the coming releases. Thank you for all of your feedback throughout the preview period, and we look forward to continuing to work with you to make our visuals as powerful as they can be.

Measure driven data labels

This release will introduce an exciting new label capability that allows you to easily swap out your default data labels with more meaningful values based on your chosen field or measure.

This measure-driven data label feature is just a taste of the great improvements that await you in the coming months. Get ready!

Work seamlessly in Power BI Desktop with files in OneDrive and SharePoint

This month, we’re excited to start the preview of new Open, Save, and Share options when working with files in OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries.

Many report authors save their Power BI files to OneDrive and SharePoint during report creation. These new capabilities help authors with file versioning, collaborating with other authors, and ensuring they always have a backup of their files in the cloud.

Start by enabling the Preview by checking the Save to OneDrive and SharePoint and Share to OneDrive and SharePoint options in the Options > Preview Features. Note, if you have lots of recent files, there is a bug affecting the performance. This will be fixed next month and we recommend you wait to turn this feature on.

When enabled, the next time you save a new file in Power BI Desktop, you’ll see OneDrive and SharePoint folders you’ve recently used, in addition to the local folders you’ve used recently.

If you don’t see the folder you need, select the More options… button which opens the new Save As experience that lists the OneDrive and SharePoint locations you have access to, and lets you navigate and create new folders. You can also Browse this device to save to a local folder.

When you press Save, we’ll upload the file to the location you chose. You can press Upload later to keep working and the file will be uploaded when you close Power BI Desktop.

Next time you open Power BI Desktop, you’ll be able to open the file directly from OneDrive and SharePoint document libraries. This downloads the file locally. This update does not add any collaborative editing of Power BI files.

Lastly, when you’re ready to share your work with a colleague, you can click the Share button at the top right-hand corner. If the file is a local file or a new file, you’ll be prompted to save it to OneDrive or SharePoint.

Then, you’ll be able to use standard SharePoint and OneDrive UI to get a shareable link or send it to the people who need it.

Sharing through OneDrive and SharePoint is convenient for report authors and small teams. For larger organizations, it’s best to use the Publish option to share through the Power BI Service, where it’s easier to distribute, find, and manage trusted reports.

Power BI admins can turn off the ability to share through OneDrive and SharePoint for users in their organization in Power BI Desktop. Use the Power BI admin portal to disable the Users can share links to Power BI files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint through Power BI Desktop setting.

When the setting is disabled, the Share button will be disabled for signed-in users. If the user has not signed in, they’ll need to sign in after pressing Share. If the Admin setting is disabled, the share option gets disabled. Users will still have the option to save to their OneDrive for Business or a SharePoint Document library, which many already do today by syncing their local file system with OneDrive or manually uploading files.

A seamless experience for using Power BI with OneDrive and SharePoint

These new open, save, and share experiences work together with our recently announced view in OneDrive and SharePoint experience. To get a fully seamless experience, ask your Power BI Admin to enable the Users can view Power BI items saved in OneDrive and SharePoint (Preview) tenant setting.

Distributing insights in the best way for your organization

Organizations need to build a single source of truth where everyone can find the most authoritative and up-to-date insights. Publishing to the Power BI Service and distributing through the Power BI app are critical elements of this process.

These new OneDrive and SharePoint capabilities complement existing processes by meeting the needs of authors, who often collaborate as a team before publishing official versions of reports through the Power BI Service.

It also helps organizations that are just starting out. They may have just a few people using Power BI who are already familiar with sharing content in OneDrive.

We’re just getting started on our plans for Power BI with OneDrive and SharePoint! We look forward to creating more features that will help you more easily interact with and get insights into your data through Power BI and Office integration experiences.

Matrix accessibility improvements

We are excited to announce several enhancements to the matrix visual for existing and new reports to improve usability and accessibility for all users.

These updates include:

- - Improved keyboard navigation and new keyboard shortcuts, including Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End to quickly traverse data in large matrices. More shortcuts are listed here: Keyboard shortcuts in Power BI Desktop – Power BI | Microsoft Learn
  - A two-toned focus outline that will always be visible even in darker backgrounds, meeting color contrast requirements.
  - New support for screen reader announcements to convey matrix structure and interactions.
  - Added screen reader support for conditional formatting icons and data bars.
  - Removed browser (default) tooltips for values that aren’t truncated.
  - Overall performance improvements for scrolling and rendering, with an updated scrollbar style.

On-Object Interaction (Preview) – Updates

The new On-object interaction feature was released to preview in March. We’ve been busy reacting to your feedback and fixing bugs. Below are the improvements added this month:

Pie, Donut, and Table visuals are now supported.

New aggregations menu: We’ve heard a bunch of feedback that switching aggregations is difficult to find on right-click alone in the new On-object design. We’ve now added a new discoverable dropdown to the flyout menu to be able to switch aggregations more easily. When first adding data, the data dropdown should open by default to avoid adding another initial click to the experience.

If using drag/drop instead of the “add data” button to add data to your visual, we’ve improved the drag/drop experience. When dragging a field to the On-object build menu for a selected visual, the build menu will open automatically to make dropping in the correct field well even easier.
Custom visuals are now shown in the ribbon visualization gallery.

- - Behavior update: The ribbon visualizations gallery is now dual-purpose. When no visual is selected, the ribbon will insert a new visual of that type. When a visual is selected, you can use the ribbon to change the visual type of the current selection.

Bug fix: Dragging to scroll within the build menu is now fixed when dragging upward.
Bug fix: Scrolled position is now maintained within the build menu when adding, swapping, or renaming a field.

Please continue to submit your feedback directly in the comments of this blog post or add to the discussion via our “share feedback” link next to the Preview switch.

Set Query Limits in Power BI Desktop

In the Service, depending on where a Power BI report’s data is hosted, there are different limits to the time a query is allowed to run and the amount of memory that query is allowed to use. However, in Power BI Desktop, these limits do not exist. This occasionally causes confusion when a visual that works on Power BI Desktop unexpectedly errors when it is viewed in the Service.

To minimize this confusion, we are giving authors the ability to define query limits in Desktop as well. This way, you can match the limits that will be found wherever your data will be hosted in the Service. You can find these new options in the Options > Report settings tab:

Existing reports will be defaulted to “No query limits” to match previous behavior, but new reports will now have “Auto” limits set by default. With auto limits, Power BI will do its best to identify where the model is hosted, and otherwise default to the Shared Capacity (which tends to be the strictest) for safety.

You can see the limits being set for each capacity you choose, and you can also set custom limits with the “Custom limits” option. When you set your own limits, you can use “0” to indicate “no limits”.

When a query limit is reached, you will see a similar error to what you would see in the Service:

Modeling

New DAX functions: MATCHBY

This month we’re introducing a new DAX function: MATCHBY. When used within any window function, this function defines the columns that are used to determine how to match data and identify the current row.

For example, below is a query that returns FactInternetSales with an added column, which indicates, for each sale, the previous sales amount in descending order of sales from the same product. Using MATCHBY, we’re able to indicate that current sales should be identified by the SalesOrderNumber and SalesOrderLineNumber. Without MATCHBY, the query would return an error since there are no key columns in FactInternetSales table.

EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS (
FactInternetSales,
"Previous Sales Amount",
SELECTCOLUMNS (
OFFSET (
-1,
FactInternetSales,
ORDERBY ( FactInternetSales[SalesAmount], DESC ),
PARTITIONBY ( FactInternetSales[ProductKey] ),
MATCHBY( FactInternetSales[SalesOrderNumber], FactInternetSales[SalesOrderLineNumber] )
),
FactInternetSales[SalesAmount]
)
)

This function can only be used within window functions. To learn more about this function, see the documentation page: MATCHBY.

New Connectors

MongoDB Atlas (New Connector)

We are excited to announce the release of the new MongoDB Atlas connector. Here is the introduction from the MongoDB team:

The MongoDB Atlas Power BI Connector allows you to access and analyze application data stored in MongoDB Atlas. Easily connect Power BI Desktop to Atlas and begin querying using SQL without the need for schema definition. Use native Power Query functionality for data transformation, advanced querying, or self-service data modeling. Perform sophisticated analysis across multiple data sources, without disrupting in-production application workloads, by leveraging the built-in federated query engine and workload isolation of Atlas.

Celonis EMS (New Connector)

We are excited to announce the release of the new Celonis EMS connector. Here is the introduction from the Celonis team:

The new Celonis EMS connector for Power BI allows you to link Power BI with your Celonis EMS Instance. As a result, you can embed process intelligence produced by the Celonis EMS into Power BI to enhance reporting with insightful process knowledge. This will accelerate business transformation and deliver insights where you need them. All published Knowledge Models are automatically listed by the Celonis EMS connector for Power BI and it is easy to import Records that are defined in the Knowledge Models. To enable the full PQL experience inside Power BI, you will be able to define Records in PQL inside the Knowledge Models and load them into Power BI.

In summary – The Celonis EMS connector for Power BI will allow you to:

- - Connect to a Celonis EMS Team via the Team URL from Power BI
  - List all published Knowledge Models and Records defined in those Knowledge Models
  - Export data from a Record defined in a Knowledge Model

CloudBlue PSA (New Connector)

We are excited to announce the release of the new CloudBlue PSA connector. Here is the introduction from the CloudBlue team:

CloudBlue PSA is the most complete cloud professional services automation (PSA) software on the market. Purpose-built with functionality to simplify every need of MSPs and professional services organizations, CloudBlue PSA introduces a state-of-the-art PSA system built for today’s modern service provider.

The platform empowers services organizations to scale recurring channel revenue and diminish operational complexity via its advanced product suite, which includes automated billing and reconciliation, an industry-leading customer support center and network operations center (NOC), real-time profitability analysis, and much more. CloudBlue PSA is available globally.

SolarWinds Service Desk (New Connector)

We are excited to announce the release of the new SolarWinds Service Desk connector. Here is the introduction from the SolarWinds team:

SolarWinds Power BI connector allows you to integrate with Power BI to pull data on incidents in the SolarWinds Service desk system and create reporting, analytics, and insights in order to improve.

Wrike (New Connector)

We are excited to announce the release of the new Wrike connector. Here is the introduction from the Wrike team:

The Wrike Connector for Microsoft Power BI lets you pull data efficiently from your Wrike account directly into Power BI, making the Wrike data objects available for your reporting purposes. Available data objects include Projects, Tasks, Custom Fields, Finance Fields, Job Role, Bookings, Approvals, Attachments, Contacts, Groups, Timelogs, Workflows etc. You can pull the data, that you have access to in Wrike, in the form of Account Level datasets, Space Level datasets and Project/Folder Level datasets. You can drill down through your Wrike Space/Project/Folder hierarchy in the Wrike Connector and select your required datasets for your preferred Space, Project or Folder. This will let you create focused analytical reports for your target Space/Project/Folder, without the need of manually filtering the data of your entire Wrike account.

Connector Updates

Anaplan (Connector Update)

The Anaplan connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the Anaplan team:

This version of the Power BI connector for Anaplan includes backend changes for compatibility with ongoing Anaplan infrastructure updates. There is no change to user-facing connector features.

AssembleViews (Connector Update)

The AssembleViews connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the AssembleViews team:

This update to the Assemble Views Connector adds the ability to select individual models as well as views for maximum flexibility when pulling data from your Assemble project.

Autodesk Construction Cloud (Connector Update)

The Autodesk Construction Cloud connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the Autodesk team:

- - Enhanced navigation experience to allow users to specifically select the tables from either the account extract or a specific project extraction.
  - This update allows users to now pull extractions from multiple projects on the same account.
  - Backwards compatibility with existing dashboards using the previous navigation method.
  - Removed Beta flag.

Azure Databricks, Databricks (Connector Update)

The Azure Databricks and Databricks connectors have been updated. Here are the release notes from the Databricks team:

- - Add escape support in sqlCapabilities.
  - Remove the beta label from the connector.
  - Enable SQL_API_SQLBINDCOL by default.

BitSight Security Ratings (Connector Update)

The BitSight Security Ratings connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the BitSight team:

- - New feature: There is now a column called Details that offers additional information about security vulnerabilities and findings.
  - Bug fix: Fixed a bug where “attributed.guid” and “attributed.name” did not refer to the right entity in a company’s tree.
  - Bug fix: Fixed a bug where character encoding did not work for French characters.

BQE Core (Connector Update)

The BQE Core connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the BQE team:

Update API endpoint to retrieve Contact, using /Contact instead of /Crm/Contact.

Eduframe Reporting (Connector Update)

The Eduframe Reporting connector has been updated. Here are the release notes from the Drieam team:

- - Added teachers as a resource.
  - Rename blocks to personal program elements.
  - Added a function to fetch Eduframe-specific user authentications.

Funnel (Connector Update)

The Funnel connector has been updated. Here is the changelog from the Funnel team:

Updated labels and help texts to be more in line with the Funnel app.

- - Renamed Account to Workspace.
  - Renamed View to Data Share.

Service

Data loss prevention (DLP) policies is now GA!

Following our Preview announcement of Data loss prevention policies for Power BI last year, we are excited to share that data loss prevention (DLP) policies are now Generally Available!

Classify and protect your Power BI data:

While organizations are taking more measures to properly classify sensitive information and install processes on how to interact with sensitive information, much of their business-critical data is still in the dark. This is precisely where the power of DLP policies comes into play: with DLP you can automatically detect sensitive information as it is uploaded to Power BI, and by thus uncover data that may have been accidentally uploaded into the wrong workspace, for instance.

Security admins can set alerts to be automatically generated when sensitive information is found in datasets. They can provide customized messages to users and help guide them on how to interact with sensitive data, such as what steps they should take. For example, whenever proprietary information is detected, show Power BI users a message explaining that this information is internal and should not be shared externally. DLP is audited in the Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal, where security admins can also monitor their policies and refine them based on feedback from users, such as reported false positives.

By using DLP policies in Power BI, you strengthen your security posture and reduce the risk of sensitive information being uploaded to the cloud without your knowledge.

DLP identifies sensitive data within the dataset and shows the user a custom policy tip, defined by the security administrator.

Detect sensitive information using custom keywords:

Some organizations consider certain terms, such as internal project names, as sensitive information that they want to ensure is not exposed outside of the organization. With this update, you will be able to define those unique internal terms as a custom keyword sensitive info type and use it as a trigger for DLP in Power BI.

Create a custom SIT of the Keyword Dictionary type to be used as a policy condition and trigger an alert

Complex conditions in DLP for Power BI:

Complex conditions enable security admins to create advanced rules using a combination of AND/OR/NOT operators. With a new and improved flow, you can configure granular and flexible rules that utilize a combination of conditions. A common scenario is locating sensitive data where it is not properly labeled according to the organization’s guidelines. In this case, you could also use the custom policy tip text to encourage users to set the correct label.

Define a complex condition: dataset contains credit card numbers and is labeled as general, OR it contains bank account numbers but is not labeled as confidential.

DLP policies in national clouds:

All of the capabilities above have been extended to include national clouds: US Government: GCC, GCC High, DoD; China: China East.

Edit your data model in the Power BI Service (Opt-in)

Introducing data model editing on the web! A first step towards modeling parity in the Service.

For many years, Power BI Desktop users have been able to configure and modify aspects of their data models in the model view. However, these model view capabilities have been specific to Desktop with no additional data model support in Service. Now, we are introducing data model editing in the Service, allowing Service users a first step towards modifying their existing data models on the web. In this preview, you can modify your existing data models on the web through actions such as editing relationships, creating DAX measures, and managing RLS. We will continue to regularly release updates to this experience with the eventual goal of parity in modeling capabilities offered in the Service.

We invite you to try it out for yourself. This feature is automatically turned on for datasets stored in My Workspace. To try this experience in a collaborative workspace, please turn on the workspace level Preview switch under workspace settings:

New Power BI Tab configuration experiences in Microsoft Teams

We’re excited to announce updates to the Power BI Tabs in Microsoft Teams. These updates help you create tabs faster, allow you to use links to configure tabs, and help you save default filters in your tabs.

When you add a Power BI Tab in Teams, you’ll see our new simplified tab UI. Just press Save to add the tab.

When the tab loads, you’re greeted with a new landing page where you can paste a link. You can also browse workspaces to select content. If you’re new to Power BI, you can even click through to create a report.

You can paste links to interactive and paginated reports, scorecards, and organizational apps.

Many kinds of links are supported, these include:

- 1. Simple links like those from the browser address bar
  2. Sharing links from the Share Dialog
  3. Sharing links with permission (like “everyone in my organization”)
  4. Sharing links with include my changes (shared views)
  5. Links to specific items in an Organizational App

Links with include my changes open new possibilities for collaboration

The same report is often used by multiple teams, channels, and in many meetings. However, in each of these locations, the report needs to be filtered to meet the unique needs of each team working with the report. By using links that include my changes, you can customize the report, so it opens on the most relevant content for the collaboration context you use.

Paginated Reports

Drill through in paginated reports:

Today, we are happy to announce drillthrough reports have now been added to paginated reports in Power BI Service! That means we now support on-premises drillthrough capabilities in the Service.

A drill through report is a report that a user opens by clicking a link within another paginated report. Drill through reports commonly contain details about an item that is contained in an original summary report. For example, in this illustration, the sales summary report lists sales orders and totals. When a user clicks an order number in the summary list, another report opens that contains details about the order.

A drillthrough report can be used to validate summarized data. It can also be used to provide granularity within another report, allowing the consumer to digest the details in a separate report instead of crowding the main report with too many data details.

You can add a drillthrough link to any item that has an Action property, such as a text box, an image, or data points on a chart within the Power BI Report Builder authoring tool. By right-clicking on the desired data point, you will see the dialog box containing the Action property. Drillthrough is the radio button option “Go to report”. You will need to specify the target or drillthrough report name and the parameters associated with the detailed report.

Drill through has been a favorite feature for on-premises customers for many years. We are now providing a means for our customers to utilize drill through for their paginated report needs. To learn more about drill through reports, please review this article. Please don’t forget to update your version of Power BI Report Builder to take advantage of drill action. If you want to keep the conversation going, please leave a comment below. To learn more about new capabilities and features join our user panel. As always, we look forward to hearing from you!

Changes to Power BI paginated reports consumption of Power BI Premium capacity

In response to your feedback with respect to ease of understanding and managing the Power BI Premium capacity resource consumption of paginated reports, we have made changes to how the paginated report workload uses Power BI capacity and how it is reported. We provided advance notice of this change:

- - in the M365 admin message center on November 28, 2022, and February 2, 2023, and
  - in an email to capacity admins in March

Our goal with the adjustment was to move to a measurement unit that was simpler to understand, closely related to user actions, and easier to manage/address report execution time. As a result, most customers are seeing a net reduction in resource consumption for the same paginated report workload. We do acknowledge that a few customers, particularly those with long-running queries on small capacities, may experience a net increase. In these cases, our recommendation is to consider a combination of optimizing data retrieval to reduce total report execution time, and increasing capacity as required.

We’re also introducing a new diagnostic view available to all users with edit permissions for the report that provides diagnostic performance metrics to help you understand how the report execution relates to Premium capacity consumption.

Developers

Enhance your custom visuals with Keyboard Navigation

As a developer, you want to create custom visuals that are not only visually stunning but also accessible to everyone, regardless of their physical abilities. That’s why we’re excited to introduce keyboard navigation. With keyboard navigation, your custom visuals will be easier to use for people with disabilities and will provide more options for interacting with reports.

The keyboard navigation feature in Power BI includes the following:

- - Pressing “Esc” will move the focus from inside the visual container, allowing users to easily exit the visual and move on to the next element of the report.
  - Pressing “Enter” on the visual will allow users to get inside the visual and interact with it using their keyboard.
  - Pressing “Tab” within the custom visual will navigate between the visual elements in a loop, providing a seamless and intuitive way for users to explore your custom visuals.

By supporting keyboard navigation in your custom visuals, you can significantly improve the accessibility and usability of your visuals for all users. We highly recommend and encourage you to add keyboard navigation to your custom visuals to improve their quality and parity with other visuals in Power BI.

To learn more about how to support keyboard navigation in your custom visuals, please read our documentation on this topic.

Detect filtered report state with custom visuals!

In certain scenarios, it’s important for custom visuals to be able to detect whether a report has been filtered. Up until now, custom visuals were unable to determine this state. However, with the release of version 5.4 API, custom visuals can now find out if there are any filters applied to the report.

This new feature is made possible through the addition of a Boolean called “isDataFilterApplied” in the DataViewMetadata object. By accessing this property, custom visuals can now easily detect if a filter has been applied to the report and adjust their behavior accordingly.

Visualizations

Zebra BI Cards 1.6

Zebra BI Cards 1.6 brings several new features that will make your KPI reporting even clearer. Highlight specific cards to attract attention and show multiple Big Annoying Numbers (BANs) for clearer reports. Provide a detailed description of KPIs for faster understanding. Change to the basis points format to track your performance better, plus more!

SORT BY DIFFERENT CRITERIA – To help you prioritize KPIs you can now explore the new sorting option for the cards. To improve data visibility, you can organize the cards by variance (relative or absolute), title, or value and sort by plan, previous year, or forecast. Easily see KPIs from different angles, gain clarity on what needs your attention, and act accordingly.

HIGHLIGHT SPECIFIC KPIs – You can now emphasize specific KPIs that need special attention from your report viewers by highlighting their respective cards. This way the visual message of your dashboard is even stronger and helps you get crucial insights faster.

SHOW MULTIPLE BANs – You can now display multiple BANs on each card. This way you can easily compare them on the spot and get additional insights into the most critical KPIs immediately.

Create Stunning Pie Charts with Drill Down Pie PRO

Drill Down Pie PRO lets users create visually appealing pie charts for easy data exploration. All interactions take place on the chart using just the mouse, letting users enjoy intuitive interactions that guide the eye. Fully customize the look of your chart with advanced formatting options.

Main features include:

- - Adjustable “Others” slice – set the number of visible slices and group the rest.
  - Cross-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 touchscreen navigation – explore charts the same way on any device.

Drill Down Pie PRO is ideal for various use cases, such as:

- - Measuring campaign performance in sales and marketing.
  - Staff composition, salary distribution, and performance data in human resources.
  - Income and expense analysis, billings, and debtors in accounting and finance.
  - Risk distribution and resource allocation in project management.

Acterys Gantt

Acterys Gantt enables comprehensive project management functionality in Power BI. In addition to extensive Gantt visualization options, the visual also supports planning and write-back for example adding and editing tasks.

Features:

- - Gantt Display of tasks on multiple hierarchy levels and task groupings
  - Adding and editing of tasks stored in a supported data source (e.g., SQL Server and any data source supported by Acterys)
  - Editing completion progress
  - Managing resources assigned to tasks

Benefits:

- - Manage and edit your projects directly in Power BI

Strip Plot by Nova Silva

Most charts will force you to summarize or categorize data before it is displayed. This can hide important details and may be misleading. The Strip Plot shows all your data observations in one go without hiding important details. It shows each data point on a single continuous scale.

Your excellent feedback allows us to continuously improve our visuals. Based on your feedback, we just released version 2.3 with several exciting enhancements.

The color formatting of all visible objects can be managed now. This allows you to use the Strip Plot in dark mode or any other preferred color scheme.

We also applied several changes to significantly improve the loading performance of the Strip Plot. You can now show up to 30,000 markers in a single visual.

And all our visuals continue to support the standard Power BI interface. We incorporate the same user experience as Microsoft in the default visuals. You can use the Strip Plot (and all our other visuals) with the latest features: On-object interaction, Subtitle, Divider, etc.

Don’t hesitate and try the Strip Plot now on your own data by downloading it from AppSource.

TMap 2.0

Newly released TMap 2.0 has added 2 types of maps: stacked bar chart map and donut chart map, and smart labeling for the linked polygon layer.

Stacked bar chart map can be used to show trends of a group of data across different geographical regions.

Screenshot 1 (Stacked bar chart):

Labels for polygon layer will be shown or hidden as zoom level changes and adjusted their positions to reduce overlapping with charts.

Screenshot2 (Donut Chart):

Calendar by MAQ Software—updated!

View key events on your Power BI report in a calendar view.

We are excited to announce that one of our top visuals, Calendar by MAQ Software, has just been updated with even more features to better serve our users. Easily track events in Power BI and experience the most effective way to visualize and manage events with our enhanced Calendar visual.

Figure 1: Sample visual showing color-coded events with a tooltip being showcased as well.

Key business uses:

- - Project Managers – Monitor project schedules and key deadlines
  - Sales and Marketing – Keep track of key dates in your sales and marketing campaigns
  - Human Resources – Manage your organization’s events, vacation schedule, and year-end reviews

Key features:

- - Ability to group events based on category
  - Multiple views available—Month, Week, Day, and List
  - Ability to navigate to event details with a click

Updated features:

- - Added custom views (Year, Semester, Quarter)
  - Ability to hide time in Week and List view
  - Ability to select multiple events

Source: Microsoft

Power BI May 2023 Feature Summary