Power BI Datamart – February 2023 Feature Summary

Introduction

Back in May 2022, we launched Datamarts in Public Preview within Power BI Premium (and Premium Per User) that enable self-service users to securely collect, store, analyze, and share their data in a unified, low code, solution – delivering SQL and unified analytics – all in a web-based experience, for the first time.

Today, we are excited to share the list of features that we’ve shipped during the month of February 2023, including:

• Manage default dataset
• Visualize results
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Open with Azure Data Studio
• Header updates – Sensitivity label

The rest of this blog post describes each of these features in greater detail.

Manage default dataset

In Power BI, a dataset is always required before any reports can be built, so the default dataset enables quick reporting capabilities on top of the datamart. They can also add additional semantic modeling properties, such as hierarchies and descriptions. These are then used to create the Power BI dataset’s tables.

We have now added the ability to add/remove tables from the default dataset within the datamart. After navigating to the model view, you will now see a new banner that prompts you to manually update the dataset:

To add tables to the default dataset, a user has 2 options:

1. Automatically add objects to the dataset, which happens by default with no user intervention needed
2. Manually add objects to the dataset

The auto-detect experience determines any tables and opportunistically adds them.

The ‘manually update dataset’ option allows you to have control of which tables are included in the default dataset.

This feature will be available in all regions by the end of the week.

Visualize results

We are excited to announce the addition of “Visualize results” capability for datamarts. With this new capability you can now easily explore and analyze the data by building visuals on top of your query results. This feature is now available both within the visual and SQL query editor. Behind the scenes, our system is creating a transient Power BI model on-the-fly so that you can immediately start visualizing your query results.

To start the experience, open a datamart and click on the “Visualize results” button after running a new SQL or visual query. On the right pane, you will see the name of the SQL query that was just executed, and a list of the columns associated to the SQL query presented for easy drag-and-drop to the Visualizations and Filters pane. Once you have selected a visualization to build the report and the specific columns to include, click on “Save as report” for easy access within your Power BI workspace to edit, share, and export.

We’ve began rolling this out and it will be available in all regions by the end of the week.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts provide a quick way to navigate and allow you to work more efficiently in SQL query editor. We are excited to share that keyboard shortcuts are supported in datamart SQL query editor. The table lists all the shortcuts available in SQL query editor. This feature is available currently in all regions.

Open with Azure Data Studio

For developers and analysts with SQL experience, using SQL Server Management Studio or Azure Data Studio as an extension to Power BI datamart can provide a more familiar querying environment.

Previously, to connect to a datamart’s SQL endpoint with client tooling, you would have to navigate to the datamart settings to copy the SQL connection string. We’re excited to introduce a new-look context menu with the ability to open your datamart seamlessly with Azure Data Studio! This feature will be available in all regions by the end of the week.

After clicking Azure Data Studio, if you have the application installed already, it will open with your connection string and authentication type prefilled. All you need to do is click “connect” and you will be on your way to querying!

Header updates – Sensitivity label

The Datamart header now allows you to set a sensitivity label without navigating away from the editor. With the new header, you can rename your datamart, get the name of workspace, navigate to the workspace and apply sensitivity label to the datamart. This feature is available currently in all regions.

That’s 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! As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next.