Today we are announcing that Power Map will become available to all Office 365 subscriptions that include the Office applications. This is part of our larger investment in making data visualizations more accessible to our customers. We are in the process of updating both Office.com and TechNet to reflect these changes.
Last month, we announced via the Power BI blog that we will be removing the expiration on the Power Map Preview and making it available for all versions of Office 2013 and Excel 2013 standalone. The updated version of the preview is now available. Office 2013 customers will need to re-download the Preview on the Download Center in order to get the Preview without the original May 31st expiration date. Office 2013 customers will not receive future updates delivered to Office 365. Office 365 customers will automatically get the latest feature updates like Repeat Tour.
Please note preview features are not supported and we do not encourage the preview version be used in production. A supported version of Power Map is available as part of the Office 365 subscription today. Power Map will also be added to Excel in the next version of Office for customers purchasing Office under a perpetual licensing agreement.
Power Map Updates
As part of our continued effort to bring new features requested by customers to Power Map, we are adding the ‘Repeat Tour’ feature. Next month we’ll cover the ‘Refresh Data’ feature and explain how the two can be used together.
Since launch we’ve heard from many customers who want to use Power Map as a presentation tool in scenarios such as demos and kiosks. In these scenarios, they need to always have their tour playing. Currently, these customers must export their Power Map tour to video and set the video to repeat. However, doing so eliminates one of the most powerful elements of Power Map, the ability to pause the tour and interact with the map directly. To address this need in the May update we’ve added a “Repeat” button to the Power Map tour playback. This will automatically cycle back to the beginning of a tour once the tour is complete. This feature allows interactive Power Map tours to repeat and thereby opens up Power Map to a whole new set of uses.
Look for more Power Map feature updates to enable new scenarios that you request. Leave more suggestions in the comments and Map On!