This blog post covers the latest updates for the Power BI Developer community. Don’t forget to check out our last developer blog post, if you haven’t done so already.
Here is the list of updates for this month:
Embedded analytics updates
Automation & life-cycle management
Connecting a report to datasets using dynamic binding
Clone and Rebind APIs support shared dataset
API for generating embed token for multiple items
Embed capabilities
Embedded paginated reports
Embedded AI – Decomposition tree
Automatic Page Refresh supported in Power BI Embedded
Personalize your table and matrix hyperlinks behavior
Interact with your embedded mobile report with single tap
Bootstrap your iframe to Improve rendering performance
Power BI visuals platform updates
Context menu support
Embedded analytics
Automation & life-cycle management
Connecting a report to datasets using dynamic binding
This exciting feature is mainly aimed at ISVs and developers that have many customers, each having their own workspace containing a dataset connected to a Power BI report. Instead of copying and maintaining hundreds of report duplicates, ISVs and developers can now maintain a single template of a report that can be connected to multiple datasets across workspaces. The same report displays different information, depending on the dataset it is connected to. For example, a report showing retail sale values can be connected to different retailer datasets, and produce different results, depending on the dataset of the retailer it is connected to. This is achieved by adding the wanted dataset to the embed configuration before embedding.
Clone and Rebind APIs support shared datasets
Shared datasets are now supported across all embedding solutions, allowing partners and customers to manage the connections of Power BI datasets and reports across workspaces. This capability enabled us to expand the following APIs and automate related scenarios:
- Rebind report REST API allows now to rebind a report to a dataset across workspaces, replacing the need to create and maintain many datasets and fulfilling the organizational requirement to maintain ‘one source of truth’ in a centrally managed dataset.
- Clone report REST API allows now to copy reports across workspaces while maintaining the original connection with the dataset that resides in a different workspace (similar to Copy reports in Power BI Service).
API for generating embed token for multiple items
The new API is aimed at ISVs and developers, embedding Power BI content into applications for their customers (aka ‘App owns data’ solution). It allows to generate an embed token with permissions for multiple reports, datasets, and target workspaces. Reports and datasets do not have to be related and binding of a report to a dataset can be done during embedding (see Connecting a report to datasets using dynamic binding).
The API for generating embed token for multiple items has many other advantages for customers, other than supporting shared dataset related automation scenarios and dynamic binding. Among these are ease of implementation and management when embedding multiple items, reports drill through scenarios, and improved performance when switching between reports.
Embed capabilities
Embedded paginated reports
As announced in our recently posted blog, the scenario of embedding paginated reports in your own application for your customers (aka ‘App owns data’ solution), is now in public preview. In addition, the scenario of embedding paginated reports into your organization’s internal apps and portals (aka ‘User owns data’ solution), is now GA.
Embedded AI – Decomposition tree
Decomposition tree visual was recently announced a public preview in Power BI Desktop. We are thrilled to announce that this highly requested feature is also supported in Power BI Embedded. A decomposition tree can be used to perform root-cause analysis by viewing how individual categories in a group contribute to the whole. The visual lets you decompose, or break down, a group to see its individual categories and how they can be ranked according to a selected measure, such as by sales amount.
Automatic Page Refresh supported in Power BI Embedded
Automatic page refresh for DirectQuery was announced a public preview in the October 2019 release of Power BI Desktop. This feature is highly requested by Power BI Embedded partners and customers as well, and we are now supporting it.
When monitoring critical events with Power BI Embedded, it’s important that the data is reflected as soon as the data source gets updated. For example, in the manufacturing industry, it’s critical to know when a machine is malfunctioning. To enable this, we are following Power BI Service and releasing the automatic page refresh capability, which allows you to set the refresh interval of visuals in your report when using a DirectQuery source. For extremely fast updating sources, this near real-time experience will allow your consumers to monitor time-critical reports and ensure that they are always viewing the latest.
Automatic page refresh for reports in Power BI Embedded is configured with steps similar to the configuration in Power BI Service. Enabling the feature and setting the minimum refresh interval are the same for Power BI Embedded Azure capacities and for Power BI Premium capacities (see here).
Personalize your table and matrix hyperlinks behavior
We have added a new user action event, ‘dataHyperlinkClicked’. Power BI supports hyperlink columns. When clicking on a hyperlink cell in a table or matrix native visuals, the URL will be loaded into a new browsing context. With ‘dataHyperlinkClicked’ event, application owners can control hyperlink cell click behavior, by setting report embed configurations to raise an event and provide their custom event handler. The event contains the selected URL, and the click source – report, page and visual.
Interact with your embedded mobile report with single tap
This feature is supported in the Power BI mobile application since April 2019 and now we have added support for mobile embedded analytics within our partners and customers’ applications. With a single tap interaction, a visual is selected and the desired action is executed at the same time.
Bootstrap your iframe to Improve rendering performance
The new powerbi.bootstrap(element,config) allows developers to start embedding before all required parameters are available. The bootstrap API prepares and initializes the iframe. When using the bootstrap API, it is still required to call powerbi.embed(element,config) on the same HTML element. One of the use cases for this feature for example, is to run the iframe bootstrap and the back-end calls for embedding (for instance, generate embed token), in parallel. It is highly recommended to use the bootstrap API when it is possible to generate the iframe before it is visible to the end user.
Power BI Visuals platform
Context Menu Support
What is the context menu?
Typically users hover over data points in a visual for the right-click menu to be available. To provide a unified and smooth experience to all users using any Power BI visuals, we recommend that our developers and partners enable the context menu in their existing and new visuals’ submissions. We have also updated our guidelines for Power BI visuals.
This is a heads-up that we’ll add this new requirement to our submission process for any new visuals or any updates of existing visuals in the coming months.
How to add the context menu to your visual?
You can find the usage guide here.
For any question and help please reach out to pbicvsupport@microsoft.com
That’s all for this post. We hope you found it useful. Please continue to send us your feedback – it’s very important for us! Have an amazing feature in mind? Please share it or vote in our Power BI Embedded Analytics Ideas forum, or our Custom Visuals Ideas forum.