Welcome to the August 2022 update. Can you imagine it’s the last month of summer already? We are excited to announce a variety of new features such as the conditional formatting for data labels, new “Select sensitivity label” dialog, data loss prevention policy update and DAX editor improvements. There is more to explore, please continue to read on.
- Conditional formatting for data labels
- New “Select sensitivity label” dialog
- Data loss prevention policy update
- Metric visual
- Mobile formatting now supports text box visuals
Data connectivity and preparation
- MariaDB (Connector Update)
- Google Sheets (Connector Update)
- Certified connectors availability in Power BI dataflows and datamarts
- New visuals in AppSource
- Editor’s pick of the quarter
- Drill Down Combo Bar PRO by ZoomCharts
- Inforiver charts
- Visualizing views in Dynamics 365 with Power BI general availability
- More ways to optimize Power BI performance
Check out the video below for this month’s summary:
Reporting
Conditional formatting for data labels
When we first brought conditional formatting for data labels to Power BI Desktop last year, the scope at which Power BI evaluated your conditional formatting rules was based on the full aggregate of the field across the whole visual, rather than at each data point. This caused all data labels in the visual to come out to the same color. We’ve since heard your feedback that this behaviour isn’t intuitive, and we’re making some changes this month and next to bring conditional formatting for data labels to be more in line with what you expect.
First, this month, conditional formatting on data labels for visuals with one or more measures and no field in the legend field well will now evaluate for data points. This example shows data labels for sales from this year colored blue if sales grew above a certain threshold over last year, or red if they didn’t:
You can find the conditional formatting options for these labels in the formatting pane, under Data labels > Values > Color. You can set conditional formatting rules for all measures or for individual measures. Formatting set on individual measures takes precedence, so if you’ve explicitly set a color for data labels on all measures and add a conditional formatting rule for just one, the conditional formatting rule will apply to that measure.
The conditional formatting rules for data labels that you’ve already set on current reports will not be affected. This is good for preserving backward compatibility, but not good for getting the per-datapoint “correct” behavior out to authors. You can get the new behavior simply by editing your report on this version of Power BI and reapplying the color conditional formatting rule onto your relevant data labels.
In a coming release, we’ll be bringing this same behavior to visuals where you also have a field in the Legend field well. We found a critical bug preventing us from shipping the whole feature to you this month, but we decided to at least get one half of it out to you early. In anticipation of the rest of this update, we’re removing the conditional formatting button from the formatting pane for data labels in cases where you have a measure grouped by a legend field. We’re doing this to prevent more users from setting up the “wrong” conditional formatting rules, since as we mentioned, we try our best to preserve prior functionality for existing reports.
Look out for more improvements to visuals and visual formatting in future releases! Now that we’ve brought error bars to general availability, our visuals team has some exciting items lined up for you, and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on them!
New “Select sensitivity label” dialog
For tenants requiring sensitivity labels on their reports, we now allow creators to set the sensitivity label directly from the save flow. Previously the dialog would be a message re-directing the user to find and use the ribbon dropdown instead. This new dialog helps save creators time searching for the sensitivity labels settings in the ribbon to complete their save.
Data loss prevention policy update
As some of you already know, we released Microsoft Purview DLP policies for Power BI to public preview earlier this year.
DLP policies enable you to better control the sensitive information managed in your Power BI tenant, as well as comply with governmental or industry regulations, such as GDPR (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation).
This month, we’re introducing the ability for Power BI users to provide feedback on the policy rules evaluating their datasets.
In the dataset’s detail page, you will now be able to see all the policy rules that have been detected for this dataset. A side panel will appear with a card
representing each and every rule. On top of viewing all the matched rules, data owners will be able to take action if they believe the data was falsely identified.
Based on how the policy rule was configured, you will be able to see one or a combination of these actions:
- Report an issue: Report the issue as a false positive (meaning that the policy has mistakenly identified non-sensitive data as sensitive, for example).
- Override: Override the policy. Overriding a policy means that this policy will no longer evaluate this particular dataset. Depending on the policy configuration, you may be required to provide a justification for the override.
- Report and override: Report the issue as a false positive and override the policy.
We’ve provided Power BI users with these tools so that they can provide insight on the datasets met with rules defined by the Security Admins in Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal and help create a built-in line of communication to ensure smooth operation on both teams.
Learn more about this:
Override data loss prevention policies (preview) – Power BI | Microsoft Docs
Metric visual
We are thrilled to announce that Metric visual is now available in Desktop! This visual 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.
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.
Learn more about the Metric visual.
Mobile formatting now supports text box visuals
In this release, we’ve extended mobile formatting to support text box visuals. Now when you add a text box to the mobile canvas, you can change its format settings to best suit the mobile-optimized view you’re creating.
Modeling
DAX Editor improvements
We have been working hard on improving the DAX editing experience after we changed some core components at the end of last year. By now we feel we have fixed the most common issues, particularly related to suggestions. Please reach out if you are still encountering issues compared to the way it used to work.
Data connectivity and preparation
MariaDB (Connector Update)
The MariaDB connector has been updated to resolve customer-reported bugs at Issues · mariadb-corporation/mariadb-powerbi (github.com).
Google Sheets (Connector Update)
The Google Sheets connector has been updated to include a direct link to Google Sheets documentation.
Certified connectors availability in Power BI dataflows and datamarts
80+ additional data sources (all certified connectors) are now available in the Power Query Online experience for use in Power BI dataflows and datamarts. This means that Power BI dataflows and datamarts creators have the option to connect to many more data sources in Power Query Online experiences, similar to Power BI Desktop today.
Notable additions:
- Anaplan
- Asana
- Azure Databricks and Databricks
- Denodo
- Dremio
- Google Sheets
- HexagonSmartAPI
- MariaDB
- Palantir Foundry
- Planview Projectplace
- Starburst Enterprise
- SurveyMonkey
See List of all Power Query connectors for more details on connector availability and visit the Power Query blog for more details on this release.
Mobile apps
Follow metrics from your mobile app
Now you can follow metrics directly from the mobile app and keep up to date with the activity on those metrics. To start following a metric, just tap More options (…) on a metric’s card in the Metrics hub or in the metric’s details pane and choose Follow metric.
To view all the metrics you’re following, select Following in the Metrics display list accessible from the Metrics hub. It makes no difference whether the metric was marked for following in the Power BI service or in the mobile app – you’ll see them all. Likewise, in the Power BI service you’ll also be able to see all your followed metrics – including those that you started following from the mobile app.
Developers
Introducing a new way to manage, enforce and transact licenses for Power BI visuals
At Inspire last month, we announced a key feature for AppSource visuals: now you can sell, manage, and enforce licenses directly through the commercial marketplace!
Use our new licensing API, available with API version 4.7 and July release of Desktop, to enforce the license and provide a unique standardized licensing experience for customers.
Read more about it in our latest blog.
Visualizations
New visuals in AppSource
The following are new visuals this update:
- Video by CloudScope
- Video Pro by CloudScope
- Collage NextGen by CloudScope
- Collage Pro by CloudScope;
- Inforiver Charts by Inforiver
Editor’s pick of the quarter
- Drill Down Timeline PRO
- Box and Whisker chart by MAQ Software
- Inforiver Premium Matrix / Table
- Dynamic KPI Card by Sereviso
- Play Axis (Dynamic Slicer)
- Inforiver Charts
Drill Down Combo Bar PRO by ZoomCharts
Drill Down Combo Bar PRO offers a uniquely wide selection of customization options, letting creators build the widest selection of charts from a single custom visual. Build everything from regular bar charts to box and whisker plots. This visual also offers powerful cross-chart filtering capabilities combined with intuitive on-chart interactions.
MAIN FEATURES:
- Multiple chart types – choose between column, line, and area charts
- Full customization – customize X and Y axes, the legend, stacks, clusters, tooltips, outline and fill settings
- Stacking and clustering – choose normal, 100% proportional, or zero-based stacking
- Customize up to 25 series
- Static and dynamic thresholds – set up to 4 thresholds to demonstrate targets or benchmarks
- Take customization to the next level with conditional formatting
- Use series defaults and value labels defaults to customize multiple series simultaneously
- Tooltip field support
- Multi-touch device friendly – get the same experience on mouse and touch input devices
POPULAR USE CASES:
- Sales and marketing – sales strategies, sales results, and campaign-by-campaign marketing metrics
- Human resources – hiring, overtimes and efficiency ratios by department
- Accounting and finance – financial performance by region, office, or business line
- Manufacturing – production efficiencies and quality metrics by product line
ZoomCharts Drill Down Visuals are known for their interactive drilldowns, smooth animations, and rich customization options. They are mobile friendly and support: interactions, selections, custom and native tooltips, filtering, bookmarks, and context menu.
Try Drill Down Combo Bar PRO now by downloading the visual from AppSource.
Learn More about Drill Down Combo Bar PRO by ZoomCharts.
Inforiver charts
Inforiver charts is the fastest way explore, visualize and share performance management insights in Power BI. Using 40+ advanced visualization options, users can build data stories in minutes and share actionable performance insights through an intuitive no-code user experience (UX).
Key Highlights:
- Performance management visualizations for both comparative and non-comparative measures with integrated variances in a single click. Variances for the prior year, budget and forecast data are calculated automatically.
- Exploratory analysis with contextual drill-down, drill-up and drill-across navigation across multiple dimensions
- Storytelling and data-point annotations to tell compelling stories using dynamic data-level annotations. Supports small-multiples, flexible text orientation, and more
- Advanced small multiples / Trellis to analyze across various data categories in a single click with highly responsive layouts, context-based titles, analytics, and comments.
- Integrated KPI Cards with multiple conditional formatted KPI Metrics, benchmarks & variances
- Most voted features: Rich feature set which includes mostly requested capabilities in Power BI Idea place and Power BI user community, such as
- Measure-driven data labels
- Stacked waterfall chart
- Gradient Line chart
- …and more
Inforiver is certified by International Business Communication Standards (IBCS) and available in AppSource to try and buy.
View an interactive demo of Inforiver charts here.
Other
Visualizing views in Dynamics 365 with Power BI general availability
We’re very excited to announce that the Power BI integration in Dynamics 365 and model driven Power Apps, which shipped as a preview last December, is now generally available. Dynamics 365 and model driven Power Apps give organizations the ability to quickly build essential line-of-business apps in a low-code environment, increasing agility and modernizing processes. Since these apps are all built on top of Dataverse, they’re backed by your core business data. With this integration directly on views, information workers are now able to tap into this data and explore it using Power BI’s powerful data analytics capabilities without ever needing to leave their app. Just click the ‘Visualize this view’ button and let Power BI automatically create a report on top of the exact data you were looking at. You can read the full details in our dedicated blog post.
More ways to optimize Power BI performance
A little while ago, we introduced settings in Power BI Desktop that allowed optimization of Power Query query execution performance. This month, we are adding new settings to influence the Power BI engine query execution on top of that. Together, these settings enable you to optimize the performance of Power BI while data is being imported or DirectQuery queries are being executed. For example, in case data import is taking too long, or DirectQuery queries are slow or slowing down source systems, these settings can help you optimize performance.
Read more about these settings in our documentation.
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!