After we released Power BI add-in for PowerPoint, you told us that when you need to freeze the view of your data in a presentation as image, it is hard to find how to do it. You also raised concerns that PowerPoint shows image of your report or visual in the slide thumbnail for everyone who views the presentation.
And you know that in Power BI we listen and constantly improve based on your feedback.
Therefore, I am happy to share that we made some changes to the way that image capture looks and works to address your feedback. We believe that this change will provide you with greater control over when data is presented and to whom.
When you use the Power BI Storytelling add-in, you will notice few changes:
- For add-in with content, there is a new dropdown under the report name with few options to view the data. I will explain more about these new options in the next section.
- When opening an existing presentation with Power BI add-in, the slide thumbnail will no longer show the data. The image will show up only when the user views the slide, and after a permission check. This is true only for newly created slides. Existing slides will show the image only at the first load of the report.
- Using the “Show as saved image” option will replace the live view with the same placeholder experience, since we disabled it and override it with the new behavior. Existing add-ins that were saved as image before this update, will keep their state and will show image in the old format. The new behavior will light up only after you change the add-in back to live state.
- When you change the add-in content to image, the footer stays active, and only the report area itself is changed to an image.
Understanding the new view modes
The add-in now has 3 view modes.
The default is “Live view”, which means that when opening the presentation and loading the slide, the add-in gets the most recent data from Power BI. So far – no change.
In addition, there are two new options:
- Public snapshot: if you change the live view to a public snapshot, the add-in content will be changed to an image, and anyone who can view this presentation will be able to view that image as well.
- Snapshot: when you change a live view to snapshot, only people who can view the report are able to view the snapshot. Others will get a message telling them that they need to get access to the report to be able to see the snapshot. They will be able to request access directly from the add-in.
Considerations
When using PowerPoint in the web, you will be able to view the live view of the report or the snapshot (both types). But there is a current limitation, and you will not be able change from the live view to a snapshot view.
This new feature is supported from Office version 2312 (Build 17126). Make sure to run Office update to get the most up-to-date bits and enjoy this feature. Users who use a previous Office version will have the previous behavior – using the “Show as saved image” option from the add-in personalization menu.
Next Steps
Get the recent Office update, and check the new Image mode in Power BI add-in. Please share your feedback with us, so we can continue improving while you watch for more exciting updates.