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Power BI Service and Mobile May and June 2020 feature summary

Headshot of article author Nikhil Gaekwad

Thank you everyone for joining and ringing in the 5th year milestone for Power BI. Again, we couldn’t have done it without the support of our amazing community. In other news, here’s a recap of all the features and announcements were made in the month of May and June:

  • Link previews for Power BI in Microsoft Teams
  • Timely Premium capacity overload alerts
  • Public preview of Power BI deployment pipelines
  • Template app for Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics app
  • Refresh summary for Premium capacity admins
  • Page view for Paginated Reports
  • Roadmap update for Workspaces
  • Updated mobile authoring in Power BI Desktop
  • Updated breadcrumbs in Power BI service
  • Sensitivity labels persist when a Power BI report is embedded in an app
  • Power BI data protection GA
  • Label inheritance upon creation of new content
  • Updates for Power BI mobile:
    • Dark mode for Power BI iOS app
    • Apply bookmarks in presentation mode
    • Show your bookmarks in slideshows
  • Roadmap updates

Link preview for Power BI in Microsoft Teams

In May, we announced a public preview of link previews for Power BI in Microsoft Teams. Link previews help users know more rich information about the URL to help colleagues find, open, and subscribe to the data they need and make better decisions. Learn more

Premium capacity overload alerts

We released a new feature that sends automated emails whenever Power BI senses a Premium capacity is overloaded. These emails are sent to users subscribed to Service Interruption Notifications. Each email alert contains a breakdown of the operations running on datasets loaded on the capacity during the 15 minutes leading to the overload detected. The breakdown shows what was to the total duration of CPU core time consumed by each operation. The top-consumers of CPU core time are the heaviest contributors to the capacity overload. Learn more

Public preview of Power BI deployment pipelines

We introduced a new way to manage content lifecycle within Power BI Premium with deployment pipelines. With this feature, enterprise BI teams can build an efficient and reusable process by maintaining development, test, and production environments. BI creators can incrementally transition new or updated content between environments, reconfiguring them with the appropriate data connections and permissions. Learn more

Template app for Power BI Premium capacity Metrics app

We also released the familiar Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics app as a template app! This app will continue to support you in monitoring the health of premium capacities and making sound decisions about the best use of them and when to scale them so that your users get the best possible experience. As a template app, you can now connect to the underlying dataset and customize of the report as per your needs. Learn more

Refresh Summary for Premium Capacity admins

We released a new and simple way to monitor and ensure the successful execution of scheduled refreshes on Power BI Premium capacities using the Refresh Summary page in the Admin Portal. Now, you can get an overview of all scheduled refreshes activity on their premium capacity with one click. Learn more

General availability of Shared and Certified datasets

We announced the general availability (GA) of shared and certified datasets. With shared and certified datasets, Power BI users can easily discover and reuse enterprise-wide semantic models. They can be shared across workspaces, fostering reuse, and maintaining the single source of truth. Check out the announcement blog to learn about the new improvements we’ve made.

Page view in Paginated Reports

We enhanced paginated reports consumption experience in the Power BI service by adding a new page view option. With this feature, users can make the paginated reports feel like a page on the browser while retaining the ability to change parameters, click on links in the reports, etc. Learn more

 

Roadmap update for workspaces

We released the roadmap for the upgrade of the new workspaces experience. Don’t forget to check out our announcement blog on the roadmap update all the details on what’s coming up.

Updated mobile authoring in Power BI Desktop

We kicked off June by announcing the updated experience for mobile authoring reports in Power BI Desktop. The new experience has capabilities such as a new phone emulator and canvas grid, updated visualization pane, and overlaid visuals. Check out the announcement blog to learn more.

Updated breadcrumbs in the Power BI service

We updated the breadcrumbs in the Power BI service to only showcase the containing folder of the artifact. When content is shared, users will be able to see which workspace the content came from instead of ‘Shared with me’ – which was shown before. With this improvement, users have a consistent experience of locating their content when viewing artifact in the Power BI service.

General availability of Power BI data protection

We announced the general availability (GA) of Power BI data projection capabilities. Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels provide a simple way for your users to classify critical content in Power BI without compromising productivity or the ability to collaborate. Sensitivity labels can be applied on datasets, reports, dashboards, and dataflows. When data is exported from Power BI to Excel, PowerPoint or PDF files, Power BI automatically applies a sensitivity label on the exported file and protects it according to the label’s file encryption settings. This way your sensitive data remains protected no matter where it is. Learn more

Sensitivity labels persist when a Power BI report is embedded in an app

Power BI business reports are often embedded in business applications such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or an organization’s website. Now when you embed sensitive information, the label applied on your reports and dashboards will be visible in the embedded view and persist when data is exported to Excel. Learn more

Label inheritance upon creation of new content

When new reports and dashboards are created in the Power BI service, they are automatically inherit the sensitivity label previously applied on parent dataset or report. For example, a new report created on top of a dataset that has a “Highly Confidential” sensitivity label will automatically receive the “Highly Confidential” label as well. Learn more

Updates to Power BI mobile apps

Lastly, we updated the Power BI mobile apps with the following features:

  • Dark mode to Power BI iOS app – Users can now opt-in to use dark mode on the Power BI iOS mobile app. With this feature, you’ll see light text on a dark background, reducing the brightness of the screen and making it easier to see your content. You can switch between themes in the app appearance settings. Learn more
  • Apply bookmarks in presentation mode – You can now apply personal and report bookmarks to report pages when presenting in presentation mode on your Windows app.
  • Show your bookmarks in slideshows – You can also you can include report and personal bookmarks in your slideshows, automatically as part of the presentation, to highlight specific insights in your data.

Roadmap updates

We use the Power BI section in the Business Application Release Notes to share details on 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. Check out the latest release (2020 wave 2 plan) to see what is the latest.