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5 most popular questions from the Power BI Ask Microsoft Anything event

Headshot of article author Jessica Cook

A couple of weeks ago, the Power BI Team held its first Ask Microsoft Anything event, and it was a fantastic success! We received several pages of questions on the AMA community forum, and for over an hour a mixed group of Power BI Program Managers, Marketing Managers, and Developers answered them all.

If you missed this event, we’ve collected the five most popular questions and answers below. Don’t see your question? Keep an eye out for the next AMA event and get your answer live!

Top Five AMA Questions and Answers

  1. Any plan to add functionality to word wrap column in table/matrix table?
    “We are adding word wrap to column headers in table in this next release! And shortly after we plan to add row header word wrap for matrix. We want to do more than that as well, but we have some big work that is starting for our matrix visual that will take most of our resources for table/matrix for a bit. It’s a pretty major overhaul and we know you are going to love it.” – Program Manager Amanda Cofsky
  2. Will you be allowing data modeling in live connections to SSAS cubes? How about connecting to multiple databases in live/DQ mode?
    “Yes – I am working on this right now. We’re working on ways to add extensions to the model where the extensions are scoped to the report. The first release will have support for creating measures, and other metadata would come later. It’s in development now, but I don’t have a ship date for you.” – Principal Software Engineer Brian Hartman
  3. Can we get an update on embedding Power BI dashboards and reports in SharePoint pages?
    “We are actively working to enable secure embedding in SharePoint Online pages. The experience will work in SharePoint’s new modern sites and modern pages. Best of all it will be fully single-sign-on when you log-in to SharePoint Online. Right now we’re testing this internally and will enable it externally once it’s ready. Generally we don’t give out timelines, but expect this one in early 2017.” – Senior Program Manager Lukasz Pawlowski
  4. Power BI has grown a lot since its launch, and the menus are getting a lot larger. Are there plans in the roadmap for a redesign?
    “Yeah, totally agree [about the menus]. The overall UX across the Desktop is getting busy as we add more functionality, and we’re always looking at ways to better structure it. We’ve got some ideas that’ll help the formatting and layout options in particular – and the order in which cards appear is getting fixed too. As they say ‘Change is bad unless it’s great’ so we’re testing things thoroughly to make sure it’s getting better!” – Senior Program Manager Will Thompson
  5. Are there any plans to support OneDrive Personal as data source for PowerBI for Desktop and then online service?
    “We are working on some additional connectivity scenarios from PBI Desktop to the PBI Service that should allow you to achieve this without using the gateway. Stay tuned!” – Principal Program Manager Patrick Baumgartner

You can read all of the AMA questions and answers on the Ask Microsoft Anything forum in the Power BI Community.