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Microsoft Power BI Updates Blog

Power BI Service and Mobile September & October Feature Summary

Headshot of article author Nikhil Gaekwad

Senior Product Manager, Power BI
6 November, 2018

We are now in the last quarter of the year and, as always, the Power BI team is saving the best for last. We rolled out some of our biggest features in the months of September and October. It was a delight to see all the positive feedback and appreciation from our community members and customers. The year is not over yet – there is more on the way! Here’s a quick recap of all the features and announcements that were made in the Power BI service and mobile in the last two months:

Commenting on Power BI dashboards

In early September, we announced a new way for you to collaborate and have discussions within Power BI using dashboard comments. Gone are the days of taking screenshots and sending them over email. Now, you can directly add comments to dashboards or specific visuals without switching context. The most powerful part of this feature is being able to @mention other individuals within your organization to grab their attention. The @mentioned users will immediately receive an email and a push notification on their mobile device if they are using the Power BI app. Try it yourself – start a conversation on your favorite dashboard or check out the blog post for more information.

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Power BI Home & Global Search

We improved the overall navigation experience in the Power BI service and made it easier for you to access + monitor your key business metrics by launching a public preview of Power BI Home and Global Search. Home is new default landing page that gives you one-click access to all your most important content (dashboards, reports, apps, workbooks, etc.) all in one view. The page is designed with various sections that is auto-populated personalized for every single user, so you don’t need to go hunting for that URL in your emails or bookmarks every time you visit Power BI. We even added search field on top of Home for you to search across all the content that you have access to within your organization. Learn more

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Updates to the Premium Capacity Metrics App

You asked, we delivered. We further enhanced the Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics app to include new metrics for monitoring queries with a completely new look and feel. Along with the comprehensive view of dataset refreshes, evictions, and system metrics, you now have a new tab for query metrics. If you are an admin of at least one capacity, check it out by installing the app or learn more about query metrics.

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Aggregations available in the Power BI service

As part of the October release of Power BI Desktop, we announced the support of aggregations in the Power BI service. This feature, available as a preview, allows you to unlock data analysis over massive datasets by optimizing query performance and data refreshes on your dataset. Check out our recording on the trillion rows demo or learn more.

Deep dive on organizational custom visuals

We released a blog post that provides a detailed explanation (with FAQs) on how you can leverage custom visuals within your organization to convey specific data or insights in a unique fashion. Definitely worth a read.

On-premises data gateway October update

We shipped a new, improved version of the on-premises data gateway in October. New features available in this release include: custom connector enhancements (support for OAuth, Vertica, and Web by examples), public preview of SAP HANA and SAP BW Single Sign-On support, improved diagnostics, and an updated mashup engine. Install the new gateway or read the blog. Documentation on the new gateway, how to use it, and list of FAQs can be found here.

New Power BI regions available

We expanded Power BI to the following three new regions in October: Central India, Australia East, and Central US (Iowa). These are in addition to the 16 regions available in the global public cloud. If you are an existing customer, you can immediately leverage these by deploying your Power BI Multi-Geo Premium capacity. Learn more

Understand what’s coming next with the Release Notes

We heard from many of you that it was important to understand what’s coming for Power BI so you can plan your deployment and train your users. With the Power BI section in the Business Application Release Notes, we share details of what’s coming in the next three to six months. These release notes are updated weekly with details on shipping dates, screenshots, and new announcements. We’ve recently disclosed some additional upcoming features you can read more about:

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