Welcome to the August 2024 update.
Here are a few, select highlights of the many we have for Power BI. You can now ask Copilot questions against your semantic model. Updated Save and Upload to OneDrive Flow in Power BI and Narrative visual with Copilot is available in SaaS embed. There is much more to explore, please continue to read on!
European Fabric Community Conference
Join us at Europe’s first Fabric Community Conference, the ultimate Power BI, Fabric, SQL & AI learning event in Stockholm, Sweden from September 24 -27, 2024.
With 120 sessions, daily keynotes, 10 pre-conference workshops, an expo hall with community lounge, and “ask the expert” area, the conference offers a rich learning experience you don’t want to miss. This is a unique opportunity to meet the Microsoft teams building these products, customers betting their business on them, and partners at the forefront of deployment and adoption.
Register today using code MSCUST for an exclusive discount!
Attention Power BI users!
If you are accessing Power BI on a web browser version older than Chrome 94, Edge 94, Safari 16.4, Firefox 93, or equivalent, you need upgrade your web browser to a newer version by August 31, 2024. Using an outdated browser version after this date, may prevent you from accessing features in Power BI.
- Version number: v: 2.132.908.0
- Date published: 8/19/24
Contents
Copilot and AI
Ask Copilot questions against your semantic model (preview)
We are pleased to announce that you can now ask Copilot for data from your entire semantic model in Desktop! Just tell Copilot what you’re looking for, and Copilot will query your model to answer your question with a visual.
To use this new capability, you need to have the Preview feature for “Copilot chat pane in report view” turned on. If you already have done this there is nothing else that you to need to utilize this new capability.
To find out more about how this feature works and the types of questions that are supported check out our previous blog post and documentation page.
Reporting
Visual level format strings (preview)
Visual level format strings are here, providing you with more options to configure formatting. Originally built for visual calculations, the core ability that visual-level format strings provide is the ability to format visual calculations. Since visual calculations are not in the model, you could not format them, unless you were using them in data labels or in specific parts of the new card and new slicer visuals. With visual level format strings, you can!
Visual level format strings, however, are useful even without using visual calculations.
With the introduction of visual-level format strings, Power BI now has three levels for format strings:
- Model. You can set a format string for columns and measures in the model. Anywhere you use that column or measure the format string will be applied, unless it’s overridden by a visual or element level format string.
- Visual. This is what we’re introducing today. You can set format strings on any column, measure or visual calculation that is on your visual, even if they already had a format string. In that case the model level format string will be overridden, and the visual level format string is used.
- Element. You can set a format string for data labels and for specific elements of the new card and the new slicer visuals. This level will be expanded to include much more in the future. Any format string you set here will override the format string set on the visual and model level.
These levels are hierarchical, with the model level being the lowest level and the element level the highest. A format string defined on a column, measure or visual calculation on a higher-level override what was defined on a lower level.
Since visual calculations are not in the model, they cannot have a format string set on the model level but can on the visual or element level. Measures and columns can have format strings on all three levels:
| Level | Impacts | Available for | |
| Measures, columns | Visual calculations | ||
| ELEMENT | Selected element of the selected visual | X | X |
| Visual | Selected visual | X | X |
| Model | All visuals, all pages, all reports on the same model | X | |
The image below summarizes this and shows that higher level format strings override lower-level format strings:
Let’s look at an example using a measure.
I have a Profit measure in my model, which is set to a decimal number format. To do this, you might have set the formatting for this measure using the ribbon:
Alternatively, you could have made the same selections in the properties pane for the measure in the model view or entered the following custom formatting code:
If you put this measure on a visual it now returns a decimal number, as expected:
However, on a particular visual you want that measure to be formatted as a whole number. You can now do that by setting the format code on the visual level by opening the format pane for that visual and the Data format options found there under General:
Now that same measure shows as a whole number, but just on that visual:
On top of that, you might want to use a scientific notation for that measure but only in the data label on a particular visual. No problem, you set the format code on the data label for that measure:
So now the total shows in scientific notation, but only in the data label and not in other places (such as the tooltip as shown below). Notice how the element level format is used in the data label but the visual or model level format string is still used for the other elements in the same visual.
For visual calculations the same principle applies but of course without the model level. For example, if you have a visual calculation that returns a percentage, you can now format it as such using the Data Format options in the General on the visual in the format pane:
The ability to set visual level format strings makes it much easier to get the exact formatting you need for your visualizations. However, this is only the first iteration of the visual level format strings. We are planning to add the settings you’re used to for the model level format strings to the visual level soon.
Since visual level format strings are introduced as part of the visual calculations preview, you will need to turn on the visual calculations preview to use them. To do that, go to Options and Settings > Options > Preview features. Select Visual calculations and select OK. Visual calculations and visual level format strings are enabled after Power BI Desktop is restarted.
Please refer to our docs to read more about format strings or visual calculations.
Dynamic per recipient subscriptions (Generally Available)
We are excited to announce the general availability of Dynamic per recipient subscriptions for Power BI and paginated reports. Dynamic per recipient subscriptions is designed to simplify distributing a personalized copy of a report to each recipient of an email subscription. You define which view of the report an individual receives by specifying which filters are applied to their version of the report. The feature is now available in Sov. Clouds as well.
Create a dynamic per recipient with a simple drag and drop experience. First, subscribe to the report by selecting “Subscribe to report”, then “Create Subscriptions”. 
Select “Dynamic per recipient” subscription.
Connect to data that has recipient email, names or report parameters.
Then, select and filter data that you want in your subscription. You probably only want to send emails conditionally. To do that, you can filter the data in the “Filter” pane.
You can select the recipient email addresses and the email subject from the dataset that you connected to by selecting “Get Data”.
You can then map your data to the subscription.
Then schedule the subscription and save it.
The subscriptions will be triggered based on the schedule that you have set up. Personalized reports can be sent to up to a thousand recipients! Learn more about Dynamic per recipient subscriptions for Power BI reports, and paginated reports.
Deliver subscriptions to OneDrive and SharePoint (Generally Available)
Do you have reports that are too large to be delivered by email? Do you have reports that are eating into your email in just a few weeks, or do you need you to move it to a different location? You can now deliver Power BI and paginated report subscriptions to OneDrive or SharePoint. With this capability, you can schedule and send full report attachments to a OneDrive or SharePoint location. Learn more about how to deliver report subscriptions to OneDrive or SharePoint.
Updated Save and Upload to OneDrive Flow in Power BI
Beginning the first week of August, desktop users should see a preview switch starting in SU8 to turn on the updated Save and Upload to OneDrive experience in Power BI. To enable this, navigate to the Preview features section of Options in Power BI. Users will then need to select “Saving to OneDrive and SharePoint uploads the file in the background”.
With these updates, we’ve improved the experience of uploading new Power BI files to OneDrive, and easily upload new changes in the background.
Preview switch that needs to be selected.
For uploading new files, after navigating to the correct location in the OneDrive file picker and saving, a dialog box appears while the file is being uploaded. The option to cancel the upload is there if needed. This dialog will only show up the first time a new file is uploaded to OneDrive.
Dialog for saving a new file to OneDrive.
When new changes are saved to a file uploaded to OneDrive, the top of the toolbar indicates that the new changes are also being uploaded to OneDrive.
Additional changes being uploaded in the background to the existing file.
If you click on the title bar flyout in the toolbar, you can also now access more information about the file. Clicking “View your file in OneDrive” will provide a direct link to where the file is stored in OneDrive.
Drop down including the link to the file in OneDrive.
Data limit
We are introducing the data limit capability to help you manage performance issues. This feature allows you to set the maximum data load for a single session per visual displaying only the rows of data in an ascending order by default.
To use this feature:
- Go to the ‘Filters on this visual’ menu in the filter pane.
- Click on the data limit menu to open a new filter card.
- Set your desired data limit value.
The filter card features include:
- Removing, locking, or clearing filters.
- Hiding or showing filters.
- Expanding or collapsing filter cards.
- Applying filters.
- Renaming and reordering filters.
Report consumers can see any data limits applied to a visual in the filter visual header, even if the filter pane is hidden.
Visuals, shapes and line enhancements
Over the past few months, we have been fine-tuning the visual elements of your reports, including columns, bars, ribbons, and lines. We have given you the ability to craft these Cartesians with precision. However, we noticed that the legends and tooltips were not quite accurate.
With the latest update, the legend and tooltip icons will now automatically and accurately reflect per-series formatting settings, such as border colors, shapes, and line styles. This makes it easier to match series to their visual representations. Additionally, we have added consistency to how per-series formatting is applied to line charts, column/bar charts, scatter charts, and other Cartesian formatting options for common items like error bars and anomalies.
Check out the Reporting demos here:
Modeling
DAX query view in the web
Write DAX queries on your published semantic models with DAX query view in the web. DAX query view, already available in Power BI Desktop, is now also available when you are in the workspace.
Look for Write DAX queries on your published semantic model.
- Right-click on the semantic model and choose Write DAX queries.
- Click on the semantic model to open the details page, then click Write DAX queries at the top of the page.
This will launch DAX query view in the web, where you can write DAX queries, use quick queries to have DAX queries written for you on tables, columns, or measures, or use Fabric Copilot to not only write DAX queries but explain DAX queries, functions, or topics. DAX queries work on semantic models in import, DirectQuery, and Direct Lake storage mode.
Write permission, that is permission to make changes to the semantic model, is currently needed to write DAX queries in the web. And, the workspace setting, User can edit data models in the Power BI service (preview), needs to be enabled.
DAX query view in the web includes DAX query view’s way to author measures. Define measures with references, edit any of them, and try out changes across multiple measures by running the DAX query, then update the model with all the changes in a single click of a button. DAX query view in web brings this functionality for the first time to semantic models in Direct Lake mode!
If you do not have write permission, you can still live connect to the semantic model in Power BI Desktop and run DAX queries there.
Try out DAX query view in web today and learn more about how DAX queries can help you in Power BI and Fabric.
- Deep dive into DAX query view in web
- DAX queries
- Work with DAX query view
- Deep dive into DAX query view and writing DAX queries
- Write DAX queries with Copilot
- Deep dive into DAX query view with Copilot
- Overview of Copilot for Power BI
- Direct Lake
Check out a Modeling demo here:
Embedded Analytics
Narrative visual with Copilot available in SaaS embed
We are excited to announce that the Narrative visual with Copilot is available for user owns data scenarios (SaaS) and secure embed. This means when a user embeds a report containing the narrative visual in a solution where users must sign in – they will now be able to the visual refresh with their data. The first step on our Copilot embed journey!
When you embed a Power BI report in an application in the “embed for your organization” scenario, it allows organizations to integrate rich, interactive data visualizations seamlessly into their internal tools and workflows. Now this solution supports the Copilot visual. A sales team might want to embed a Power BI report in their internal CRM application to streamline their workflow. By integrating sales performance dashboards directly into the CRM, team members can easily monitor key metrics like monthly sales targets, pipeline status, and individual performance, without switching between different tools. This integration enables quicker access to actionable insights, helping the team make informed decisions, identify trends, and react swiftly to market changes, all within the secure environment of their organization’s data infrastructure.
Supported Scenarios:
- Embed a report in a secure portal or website Power BI.
- User owns data: A user embeds a report containing the narrative visual in a solution where users must sign in. They need a license to do so. This action is also known as embed for your organization. It includes when users want to embed visuals in solutions like PowerPoint as well.
Unsupported Scenario:
- App owns data: A customer embeds a narrative visual on a website where users visit, and don’t need to sign in. Also known as embed for your customer’s application.
To get this set up, there are a few steps to follow – so make sure to check out the documentation. Embed a Power BI report with a Copilot narrative visual – Power BI | Microsoft Learn
You will need to Edit your Microsoft Entra app permissions to enable the embedded scenario to work.
From here you’ll need to add the MLModel.Execute.All permission.
Once you do that, your visual should work in your embedded experiences where users still sign in.
Check out the documentation for additional details.
Check out an Embedded Analytics demo here:
Visualizations
Editor’s pick of the quarter
Icon Map Pro
hi-chart Reporting Studio
Water Cup
Performance Flow – xViz
Sunburst by Powerviz
Zebra BI Tables 7.0
Enlighten Storyteller
Inforiver Writeback Matrix
Drill Down Pie PRO (Filter) by ZoomCharts (microsoft.com)
Spiral Plot By Office Solution
Polar Scatter Plot By Office Solution
Hanging Rootogram Chart for Power BI
Bar Chart Run Time Convertible Scatter Plot
Circular Dendrogram Chart for Power BI
Barley Trellis Plot By Office Solution
Connected Scatter Plot Chart For Power BI
Dot Plot Chart by Office Solution
Voronoi Diagram By Office Solution
Fish Bone Chart for Power BI
Icon Array Chart for Power BI
New visuals in AppSource
Image
Skyline
StackedTrends Visual
Bubble Diagram
Chord Diagram
Non-Ribbon Chord Diagram
Filter by Powerviz
Powerviz Filter is an advanced Power BI slicer (Free Visual) that applies a page-level filter to the data. It stands out for its user-friendly design and customization flexibility, with developer-friendly wizard.
Key Features:
- Hierarchy Control: Support multiple hierarchies with expand/collapse and by-level formatting
- Ragged Hierarchy Support: Hide BLANK category/values, or both, and display child as parent.
- Keep selected items at Top: enable this to show your selected items at top.
- Display Mode: Seamlessly switch between pop-up/canvas modes.
- Default Selection: Select default categories/values that automatically get filtered on refresh.
- Selection Mode: Single-select, multiple-select, or select-all with only single-selection.
- Image: Add images alongside the filter. HTML Links/Base-64 URLs Support.
- Title-Bar Options: Search Bar, Clear Icon, Ranking, Filter, Sorting, Expand/Collapse.
- Conditional Formatting: Highlight font and row background color based on specific rules.
- Template: Choose from professionally created light/dark templates, and easily customize them using the Global styling option.
Other features included are Import/Export Themes, Interactivity, Filter Style, and more.
Business Use-Cases:
Sales Analysis, Marketing Performance tracking, Financial Monitoring
🔗 Try Filter Visual for FREE from AppSource
📊 Check out all features of the visual: Demo_file
📃 Step-by-step instructions: Documentation
💡 YouTube Video: Video_Link
📍 Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/
✅ Follow Powerviz: https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U
Pie of Pie by JTA
Slice to Spice: Transform your Pie Chart by Clicking! Dive deeper with a click, creating a new pie!
Pie of Pie by JTA – a Data Scientist’s Visualization Tool
Slice, Click, Reveal: Explore Deeper Insights with Our Interactive Pie Chart Visual for Power BI!
Overview
A Power BI custom visual that enables the creation of a hierarchical representation within a Pie Chart. With a simple click, you can effortlessly delve into detailed categories, offering a seamless and visually intuitive way to unveil multi-level insights in a single view.
Experience the convenience of interactive data analysis, where each slice of the initial pie chart acts as a gateway to deeper layers of information. Whether you’re dissecting population demographics, dissecting sales performance, or analysing product distribution, Pie of Pie offers a seamless and visually intuitive solution.
Key Features:
- Interactive hierarchical representation within a Pie Chart: Dive into detailed categories with ease, exploring multi-level insights seamlessly.
- Effortlessly explore multi-level insights with a single click: Click on a slice to reveal deeper layers of information, enhancing your data analysis experience.
- Customizable colours, labels, and legend: Tailor the visual to match your branding or personal preferences, ensuring clarity and consistency in your reports.
- Choose where to display always both pies and just show the second upon click: Optimize your visual presentation by selecting the most suitable display mode for your data storytelling needs.
- Animate the visual: Bring your data to life with smooth animations, captivating your audience and enhancing engagement with your insights.
- Personalize the spacing: Fine-tune the spacing between elements to achieve the perfect balance of aesthetics and readability in your visualizations.
Download Pie of Pie by JTA for free: AppSource
Try Pie of Pie by JTA: Demo
Youtube video: Youtube
Learn more about us: JTA The Data Scientists
Drill Down Pie PRO by ZoomCharts
Everyone knows what a pie chart is – for centuries, it has been the most popular way to visualize data. But what makes Drill Down Pie PRO special is the incredible amount of flexibility it offers to creators. Enjoy a wide range of customization features (colors, fonts, legends, labels, and more), create up to nine levels of drill down hierarchy, and declutter the chart with an interactive ‘Others’ slice that users can expand with just a click.
What’s more, this visual can be more than just a pie chart – it can be an interactive navigation tool for the entire report. When the user selects a slice or drills down, it will cross-filter other visuals on the report, instantly revealing focused insights. Create faster, more intuitive, and more insightful reports with ZoomCharts!
Main Features:
- On-chart drill down
- Cross-chart filtering
- Up to 9 levels of hierarchy
- Adjustable ‘Others’ slice
- Color, label, and legend customization
- Custom tooltip fields
- Touch support
🌐 Get Drill Down Pie PRO on AppSource
Product Page | Documentation | Follow ZoomCharts on LinkedIn
Hierarchical Bar Chart
Hierarchical bar chart displays hierarchical data (different fields having parent/child relationship) in the form a bar/column chart with +/- signs to view/hide details or child elements.
A new feature was added to the visual in Jun 24 whereby the users can display CAGR between the 2 values by clicking the bars one after another (after turning on “CAGR” from format pane).
This visual has the following key features.
1) Expand/ Collapse bars using (+/-) buttons
2) Show variance between bars
3) Show CAGR between bars
4) Drag the bars for custom sorting
5) Click on legends to drill down/up to any level
6) Show targets
Watch a demo of these features in short video below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOcs5RNY-Zs
Download this visual from APPSOURCE
Download demo file from APPSOURCE
For more information visit https://www.excelnaccess.com/hierarchical-barchart/
or contact zubair@excelnaccess.com
Deneb: Declarative Visualization in Power BI
Deneb is a free and open-source certified custom visual that allows developers to create their own highly bespoke data visualizations directly inside Power BI using the declarative JSON syntax of the Vega or Vega-Lite languages.
This is like the approaches used for creating R and Python visuals in Power BI, with the following additional benefits:
- Everything in-visual—no additional dependencies on local libraries or gateways for your end-users when publishing reports.
- Microsoft certified runtime—any visual you create receives the same benefits of a certified custom visual, meaning your design will work anywhere Power BI works, including Publish to Web, mobile, PowerPoint, and PDF exports.
- Performance—your designs are rendered directly inside Power BI rather than being delegated to another location, keeping data inside your workbook and typically resulting in faster render times for end-users.
- Interactivity—You can integrate Power BI’s interactivity features (tooltips, Drillthrough, cross-filtering, and cross-highlighting with some additional setup.
📢Our latest version brings many of our top requested new features to the development experience, including:
- Dark mode—toggle between the traditional light theme and dark theme to reduce eye strain.
- Commenting—you can now add comments to your JSON for documentation and debugging purposes.
- Auto-completion improvements—suggestions will now be recommended based on the details in the Vega and Vega-Lite schemas.
- Inline language documentation (for Vega-Lite)—the documentation the Vega team makes available for Vega-Lite in its language schema is now available when you hover your mouse over an appropriate location in your JSON. This will help you discover more language features within Deneb itself, and any hyperlinks will navigate you to the correct location on the Vega-Lite documentation site for further reading.
- Auto unit formatting—a new format type that applies the same logic as Power BI format numbers in K, M, Bn, etc., with less effort than the existing Power BI value formatter.
- Advanced cross-filtering (for Vega)—new expression functions to help generate cross-filtering of report items based on a filter against the original dataset sent to Deneb before any transformations may have been applied.
We have many other enhancements in this release, and you can find out more about how these can help you and your readers by:
- Visting the Change Log on Deneb’s website
- Checking out our YouTube spotlight videos on key new features
- Downloading Deneb from AppSource
- Getting inspired by examples from our community or the sample workbook
- Following Deneb
Other
Paginated Reports: Sharing of reports connecting to Get Data data sources made easy
We announced the ability to create paginated reports from Power BI Report Builder by connecting to over 100 data sources with the Get Data experience. You can learn more about Connect paginated reports to data sources using Power Query (Preview) – Power BI | Microsoft Learn. You no longer need to share the shareable cloud connection. You only need to share the report and ensure that those consuming the report have access to view the report. This update will be rolling out in the coming weeks.
Fabric Sticker Challenge Winners Announced!
The Fabric Community Sticker Challenge launched August 1-23 and winners are in! All Fabric Community members were invited to create unique stickers showcasing their enthusiasm and creativity under the following categories: Community Enthusiasm, Inspirational, “Inside Joke” for developers and data, and Super Users. To see winning designs, check out our Community News. Thank you all who participated in this challenge; it was great to see so much involvement!
Fabric Influencers Spotlight
Check out our latest initiative, the Fabric Influencers Spotlight. Each month, we’ll be highlighting some of the great blog, videos presentations and other contributions submitted by members of Microsoft MVP & Fabric Super User communities that cover the Fabric Platform, Data Engineering & Data Science in Fabric, Data Warehousing, Power BI, Real-Time Intelligence, Data Integration, Fabric Administration & Governance, Databases and Learning.
That is all for this month!
We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review.
As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!