ArcherPoint Power BI in Brief - August 2019
Each month, we gather top headlines in the Power BI world to bring you this Brief to keep you informed, educated, and prepared to take advantage of its ever-expanding capabilities. If you have any questions or want to see what Power BI can do for your organization, contact the BI experts at ArcherPoint.
July Updates
We kick off this month’s Brief appropriately, with a look at Power BI updates for July, which marked a “major update”—the first feature release from announcements made at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Icon sets. This release also included enhancements to existing features, including RLS support for aggregations, as well as several key features that are now generally available. Following is a partial list of July’s updates. Each section is linked to the Microsoft Power BI blog discussing each feature in depth:
Reporting
- Icon sets for table and matrix
- Percent support for conditional formatting by rules
- New filter pane is now generally available
- Data colors support when using play axis on scatter charts
- Performance improves when using relative date and dropdown slicers
Analytics
Visualizations
- PowerApps visual is now certified
- InfoCard
- Sunburst by MAQ Software
- Flying Brick visual
- Data connectivity
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 connector (beta)
- Azure Cosmos DB Connector is now generally available
- Dynamics 365 Customer Insights connector
- Data preparation
- New Transform: Split column by positions
New Filter Experience for Reports
In the past month, Microsoft’s Power BI team has updated the look and feel and added new functionality to its reporting capabilities.
Pop-up Filter List – The ability to hover over the filter icon in the visual header to see a read-only list of all the filters or slicers affecting that visual makes it easy to understand which filters are applied.
Format and Theme – Creators have control over the look and feel of the filter pane so you can make it cohesive with your report.
Lock and Hide Filters – Consumers can see filters applied but not modify them, and creators can hide filters as well.
Sort Filters – Creators can custom sort filters in the new filter pane to control where filters show up in the list.
Rename Filters – Changing the display name is as easy as double-clicking on the filter card titles. The name is also updated in the filter dialog.
Capture Filter State in Bookmarks – This is a new filter pane that lets creators capture the visibility and expanded or collapsed state of the filter pane in bookmarks.
A New Look for Power BI Service
The user interface is being refreshed for a simpler, more modern, user-focused experience that keys on familiarity with Microsoft products. The first release includes updates to report viewing, with more to come in stages over the next few months. Current updates include more metadata visibility, vertical navigation, a simplified action bar, an updated filters experience.
Microsoft Recognized as a Leader in Enterprise BI Platforms
Lastly, we give a shout-out to Microsoft’s Power BI team. Microsoft was recently recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise BI Platforms (Vendor-Managed), Q3 2019, tied for the highest score in strategy and market presence. Of the many compliments Forrester gave Power BI, this one says it all: “Forrester recommends that organizations consider Power BI as their main enterprise BI platform before looking elsewhere”. Download The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise BI Platforms (Vendor-Managed), Q3 2019 report to learn more.
As always, contact ArcherPoint for your Power BI and reporting needs.