Welcome to the October 2024 update!
We have a lot of exciting updates to share with you this month.
Quick measure suggestions with Copilot to be replaced with Microsoft Fabric Copilot, we have an update with Azure Map – Data Bound Reference Layers, and a preview of New List Slicer.
There’s a lot more to discover, so read on to see all we have for you this month.
- Version number: v: 2.137.751.0
- Date published: 10/14/24
Contents
October Monthly Updates Video
Copilot and AI
Enhanced Power BI Report Creation with Copilot (Public Preview)
Improvements have been made to the create page capability in Power BI with Copilot! These updates are designed to make your experience clearer and more transparent.
Increased Clarity and Contextual Awareness
To help you initially build more valuable reports, Copilot can now engage with users to gather more details before creating a page. This ensures that Copilot has a comprehensive understanding of your needs right from the start to create a more relevant page for you. Copilot can also offer recommendations on fields and measures to use in a report.
Page Outline and Increasing Transparency
After creating a page with Copilot, you’ll now see an outline in the Copilot chat pane. This allows you to review the content and ensure that the page meets your requirements. The outline also helps add transparency so users can see what data fields copilot is using to build out the report.
Please visit our bigger blog post and documentation to learn more about creating reports in the Power BI service with Copilot.
Quick measure suggestions with Copilot to be replaced with Microsoft Fabric Copilot
Quick measure suggestions with Copilot feature are no longer available in public preview.
To continue to use natural language to write DAX formulas for measures, Microsoft Fabric Copilot in DAX query view can help you write DAX queries, which can include query-scoped measures that can be added to your model.
Quick measures will continue to let you choose a calculation from a list and create a measure using a drag-and-drop template, generating the DAX formula upon clicking Add. You can see and modify these measures in the DAX formula bar. Quick measure suggestions public preview introduced quick queries as a pane, allowing you to drag-and-drop from the Data pane instead of within a dialog. The quick measures will continue to be in the Quick measures pane, and the dialog experience will no longer be available.
Starting in October 2024, the tenant setting for this feature will also no longer be available and users who have older versions of Power BI Desktop and the public preview switch enabled will see the feature as disabled.
Learn more with these resources:
- Quick measures documentation
- DAX query view documentation
- Copilot to write and explain DAX queries documentation
- Microsoft Copilot for Power BI documentation
Reporting
Visual calculations update (preview)
Combo charts are now supported
You can now use visual calculations in combo charts, such as the line and clustered column chart, just like you could in the other chart types. Here’s an example of a visual calculation returning the moving average over three quarters:
The visual calculation used here on the Line y-axis is:
ThreeQuarterMovingAverage = MOVINGAVERAGE([Sales Amount], 3)
Field parameters are now supported
This month we have enabled the use of visual calculations with field parameters, you can add a visual calculation to a visual that contains a field parameter and vice versa.
Field parameters can be used to quickly switch around what’s shown in a visual. For example, you can create a field parameter to enable your users to decide which attributes of a dimension to show. In this example a field parameter called Product Attribute can be used to determine what the Percent of grand total visual calculation returns:
The Percent of grand total visual calculation is defined using the template as:
Percent of grand total = DIVIDE([Sales Amount], COLLAPSEALL([Sales Amount], ROWS))
Since the Percent of grand total visual calculation used here refers to ROWS as its axis, it will update and reflect the correct values when another product attribute is picked:
Please try out combining field parameters and visual calculations and let us know what would make the combined experience better for you by commenting below or at feedback.
Faster way to add a templated visual calculation
You can now add a templated visual calculation with fewer clicks by clicking on the bottom part of the New visual calculation ribbon button to see a menu that includes the templates. Clicking on a template will open the visual calculation mode where you can fill in the template and add your visual calculation.
If you want to create a new visual calculation without using a template, either select the top part of the New visual calculation button or choose Custom from the visual calculation template menu shown above.
Learn more about visual calculations in our documentation.
Azure Map Update – Data Bound Reference Layers
This month, the Azure Maps visual brings a powerful enhancement to its functionality with data bound reference layers.
In previous releases, the Azure Maps reference layer was limited to static shapes without the ability to conditionally format or bind geometries to customers’ business data. Additionally, the static nature of the reference layers limited user interaction, preventing actions such as selecting, filtering, clicking, or accessing tooltips for polygons and points, unlike other visual components.
With the data bound reference layer, this limitation is addressed by allowing seamless integration between the reference layers and customer business data. Reference layers can now be dynamically bound with the spatial fields used, empowering customers to visualize their business data in context with geographic or spatial elements. Users can now update their visuals in real time, interact with their data through Power BI’s standard features such as filtering, cross-highlighting, and tooltips—greatly enhancing the flexibility and interactivity of the Azure Map visual.
Making your reference layers data bound is easy to do. We’ll automatically map the shapes in your reference layer to values of the field in the Location bucket in the Build pane based on the name property you provide in your reference layer file.
This update also allows you to customize the colors of your shapes as well, using features like conditional formatting or through tying their color to a legend color.
Shapes that aren’t tied to a value in your model are considered unmapped. You can format them to use custom colors or hide them completely from your map. As cross-highlighting is a temporary filter on the map, the treatment you apply here is also what will happen to unselected shapes when cross-highlighting from another visual.
Marker enhancements
Revamping the rendering of columns, bars, ribbons, lines, area charts, and markers is a top priority. These elements form the foundation of our core visuals and will eventually impact other areas. By providing more control, our report creators can enhance their storytelling and help users easily interpret data.
In the October 2024 update, markers for line charts, scatter charts, and anomalies are improved with this revamp. This update introduces new options that offer greater customization and flexibility, explore these new options and maximize their potential.
Markers for line and scatter charts can be customized in two ways:
- Categories: When the chart has no series, the dropdown menu displays categories. You can customize each data point’s marker based on the selected x-axis category.
- Series: When the chart displays a legend, the dropdown menu displays series. You can customize the markers for the complete set of data points within the selected series.
You can hide or show markers for a specific data point category by toggling the ‘Show for this category’ option. Please note that the ‘Markers’ toggle has been moved under ‘Show for all series.’
New format settings have been added to markers for line charts, scatter charts, and anomalies, including:
- Shape: Shape markers continue to offer control over their type and size. Additionally, rotation is now available for all shape types, except for the circle shape. Rotating shapes enhance the variety of shape types at your disposal, which is particularly convenient when multiple lines require unique shapes.
- Color: Changing the color of markers has always been a convenient control. Now, you can also modify the transparency of markers for a specific category, series, or all markers.
- Border (New): Borders for markers have been introduced, allowing you to add borders to a specific marker category, series, or all markers. Additionally, you can fully customize the marker borders by adjusting their transparency and width.
New List Slicer (Preview)
In this update, we would like to introduce the new List Slicer. To try it, navigate to Options and settings > Options > Preview features > List slicer visual. Major enhancements are coming, including image support, labels, additional conditional formatting options, and improved default styles specifically designed for hierarchical layouts.
Please note, this new visual is in its early development stage, we don’t recommend using it in production currently. However, this is an excellent opportunity to experience the capabilities of this new slicer and provide us with feedback for future improvements.
The new List Slicer can become hierarchical when more than one field is dragged into the field data well. This action will activate additional format settings specific to hierarchical data.
Another advantage of the new slicer is the level of customization it offers, including:
- Selection: Customize how items are selected within the slicer.
- Shape: Adjust the shape of the slicer to fit your design needs.
- Layout: Modify the layout to better organize the slicer elements.
- Overflow: Manage how the slicer handles overflow content (e.g., Continuous scroll, paginated).
- State styles: Define styles for different states (e.g., selected, unselected, on hover).
- Selection icon: Choose an icon to represent selected items. Available for the ‘Tile slicer’ too.
- Expand/Collapse icon: Select icons for expanding or collapsing hierarchical data.
- Button styles: Customize the appearance of buttons within the slicer.
Power BI in Teams – Announcing the retirement of the “Teams activity analytics” report
“Teams activity analytics” report is an out of the box report users can create in their own workspace, which tracks their Teams usage data. The option to create this report is from Power BI application in Teams, Outlook and M365.
We will be retiring this feature starting from December 31, 2024. Starting January 1st, 2025, users will not be able to create that report, and reports that were already created will not be updated.
Why are we retiring the “Teams activity analysis” report?
Teams provide a native analytics view for teams and channels, which gives users insight into usage patterns and activity on their teams. Users can see data such as the number of active users, posts, replies, and more.
This is part of a more complete set of reporting available in Teams which provides a wider view of Teams usage. For example, you can see how many users communicate through channel and chat messages and the kinds of devices they use to connect to Teams. For more information, please refer to this documentation: View analytics for your teams in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
How this will affect you
If you already created your “Teams activity analysis” report, the data in this report will no longer be updated.
The option to create a new “Teams activity analytics” report will be removed from the Create section in Power BI app inside Teams/Outlook. Therefore, you will no longer be able to create this report.
What you need to do to prepare
For users who need to understand how Teams is being used in their organization we advise you to use Teams “Teams Analytics” instead.
For more information, refer to our documentation: View analytics for your teams in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support
Modeling
Dynamic format strings for measures (generally available)
Dynamic format strings for measures are now generally available, giving you ultimate flexibility in how measures are displayed in visuals. These format strings can be conditionally applied using Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) based on the measures value, filters applied, and/or to add additional information, such as units.
If you haven’t already, check out the Guy in a Cube video, the deep dive blog, and feature documentation to learn more and get ready-to-use examples of how to apply them today. If you know of a community post or video about these, please share it in the comments!
Introducing INFO.VIEW Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) functions
DAX query view introduced new DAX functions to get metadata about your semantic model with the INFO DAX functions, and now four of these functions are also available as INFO.VIEW DAX functions, which convert IDs to friendly names, and can be used in calculated tables of the semantic model in addition to being able to run them in DAX query view.
Adding them as calculated tables ensures your model self-documents and stays current with all your latest changes automatically. Not only can these be used in calculated tables, but they will show the name or value of a column previously only displaying an ID.
INFO.VIEW.TABLES() shows information about the tables in your model, including what storage mode each table is in. You can also quickly identify tables marked as a date table by the Data Category of Time.
INFO.VIEW.RELATIONSHIPS() shows information about all the relationships in your model, including a relationship column giving a quick summary of the to and from columns with direction and cardinality.
INFO.VIEW.MEASURES() shows information about the model measures, including if it’s in a valid or error state.
INFO.VIEW.COLUMNS() shows information about the columns, including data category and data type.
Value filter behavior (preview)
DAX has an automatic filtering mechanism that occurs when multiple columns from the same table are filtered. This behavior is informally called ‘auto-exist’. DAX understands that not all combinations of values across these columns are valid and as a result it automatically excludes invalid combinations. The DAX Engine generated a coalesced value filter that not only returns valid combinations but also affects measured calculations. This month we are giving you more control over whether you want this behavior in your semantic model. You can decide whether you want to turn off coalesced values filters and turn on independent value filters instead. Turning on independent value filters by setting the ‘Value filter behavior’ setting to Independent (see below) results in multiple filters on the same table being kept separate instead of the DAX engine combining these into one.
Understanding current value filter behavior
When you are filtering multiple columns on the same table, the current default value filter behavior takes these filters and combines them into one, considering only the combinations that exist. Consider the following two columns on the same table:
- Year, which contains values like ‘2023’.
- Month, which contains values like ‘January 2024’.
If you filter on both Year and Month, since these columns are on the same table, the value filter behavior combines the filters into one, but only the combinations that exist are considered. Of course, the combination of the month January 2024 with year 2023 does not exist and would not be included in the filter. There are, however, situations in which the results are surprising.
Let’s look at an example, where we have a catalog showing availability of colors for products by year. The manufacturer of these products has experimented with making products in various colors throughout the years:
We have three products that have been available in various colors over the years. Notice how there are no red products offered in 2024. That is going to be important a little later.
Now, let’s count the number of products by adding the following measure:
Number of Products = COUNTROWS( 'Catalog' )
The following matrix shows the number of products that are available in various colors per year:
Now, let’s add another measure to calculate the total number of products for all years:
Number of Products All Years = CALCULATE ( [Number of Products], ALL ( 'Catalog'[Year] ) )
Let’s put these measures side-by-side and filter to year 2023 and just the blue and red colors (no black). As you can see the number of products is 4 and the number of products across all years for these two colors is 6:
If we switch the Year to 2024, we expect the ‘Number of Products’ measure to return 2, as there are just two products that are blue in 2024 and there are no red products in that year.
On top of that, we would expect that the number of products for all years will not change, because, after all, it is supposed to be calculated across all years. However, the ‘Number of Products for All Years’ changes from 6 to 5:
The number of products across all years should still be 6, not 5. What we are seeing here is the value filter behavior in action: it is combining filters on the same table, removing combinations that did not exist. The filters are Year = 2024 and Color = Blue or Red. Since these two filters are on the same table, these filters are combined into one filter that only filters for the combinations that exist. Since there are no red products in 2024, the applied filter is Year = 2024 and Color = Blue.
Therefore, the number of products for all years now counts just the number of blue products, not the blue or red products. This returns 5, as you can confirm in the table.
Influencing the value filter behavior
This month we are giving you control over whether you want this behavior in your semantic model, by using the ‘Value filter behavior’ setting on your semantic model in the properties pane in the model view:
Three options are available:
- Automatic – This is the default setting and currently turns on the Coalesced behavior. When we wrap up this preview, new models set to ‘Automatic’ will use Independent, there will be an announcement at that time.
- Independent – This forces filters on the same table to be kept separate. After setting the ‘Value filter behavior’ setting to ‘Independent’, the total number of products for all years returns 6 as expected (see below).
- Coalesced – This forces the value filter behavior to be enabled for the semantic model and will result in combining the filters on the same table into one. The number of products for all years in our example will continue to return to 5.
The table below shows the impact of this setting to our example:
| Value filter behavior setting | Filters applied in the example | Result of example measure |
| Automatic | Year = 2024, Color = Blue |
5 |
| Independent | Year = 2024, Color = Blue or Red |
6 |
| Coalesced | Year = 2024, Color = Blue |
5 |
Note that setting the ‘Value filter behavior’ to Automatic, means it is equal to Coalesced for now, but will be switched to Independent for new semantic models in the future.
If you set the ‘Value filter behavior’ to Independent, the number of products for all returns 6, as expected, since the filters are Year = 2024 and Color = Blue or Red and are no longer combined:
Learn more
Refer to our documentation to read more about visual filter behavior.
Data connectivity
Snowflake connector updates
- The driver used by Snowflake connector is updated to the latest version for incremental improvements.
- The Snowflake connector has improved performance by reducing metadata queries when not necessary.
Mobile
Power BI Mobile apps will no longer connect to Report Server using OAuth and AD FS 2016
As of March 1st, 2025, the Power BI Mobile app will no longer be able to connect to Report Server using the OAuth protocol through AD FS configured on Windows Server 2016.
Today, the Power BI Mobile apps use two authentication libraries: MSAL when connecting to Power BI service and non-AD FS based Report Server scenarios. And ADAL when connecting to AD FS using OAuth protocol.
Since ADAL library reaches end-of-life, it is time for us to migrate all authentication scenarios to use MSAL. Given that MSAL requires AD FS 2019 or newer, the Power BI Mobile apps will no longer be able to connect to AD FS 2016 once this migration is completed.
If your organization is using AD FS 2016 with their Report Server, you will have to upgrade to Windows Server 2019 or later, or use Microsoft Entra application proxy, to be able to connect from Power BI mobile apps to their Report Server, by March 1st, 2025.
Visualizations
New in AppSource
Sales Velocity Compass by Office Solution
Date Picker by Powerviz
The Ultimate Date Slicer for Power BI.
The “All language support” and “Highlight Invalid dates using DAX” options were added in the recent version update.
The Date Picker visual offers a modern calendar view, Presets, Pop-up mode, Default Selection, Themes, and more, making it a must-have date slicer for Power BI reports. Its rich formatting options help with brand consistency and a seamless UI experience.
Key Features:
- Display Mode: Choose between Pop-up and Canvas modes.
- Presets: Many commonly used presets like Today, Last Week, YTD, MTD, or create your preset using field.
- Default Selection: Control the date period selected when the user refreshes or reopens the report.
- Filter Type: Choose between Range and Start/End types.
- Month Style: Select single- or double-month date slicer.
- Multiple Date Ranges: Flexibility to select multiple date ranges
- Themes: 15+ pre-built themes with full customization.
- Holidays and Weekends: Customize holidays/weekends representation.
- Import/Export JSON: Build templates and share your designs.
- Invalid Dates: Customize invalid dates in your data or the ability to mark certain dates invalid via a DAX.
Many more features and customizable options.
🔗 Try Date Picker 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
Cycle Plot by Nova Silva
A cycle plot is a powerful tool for visualizing and understanding seasonal patterns in time series data. Unlike traditional line graphs, which may obscure cyclical trends, cycle plots separate data into cycles (e.g., months, days, or quarters) and plot them individually for each period within a cycle.
This method highlights within-cycle variations and trends across cycles. For example, a cycle plot of monthly sales over several years would display each month’s trend over time, making it easier to identify whether certain months consistently perform better or worse. It also reveals how overall trends (like yearly growth) affect individual periods.
Cycle plots are particularly useful for businesses and analysts who need to identify seasonality in sales, website traffic, or other metrics. By visualizing data this way, decision-makers can better plan for seasonal peaks and troughs, optimize inventory, and tailor marketing efforts.
In summary, cycle plots offer a clearer and more detailed perspective on time series data, making them an essential tool for uncovering and leveraging seasonal patterns.
Try the Cycle Plot for FREE now on your own data by downloading it from the AppSource.
Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com/.
Drill Down Network PRO by ZoomCharts
Create network charts from your categorical data easily with Network PRO! Simply add category and value fields, and the visual will automatically detect relationships and visualize them as nodes in an interactive and easy-to-explore chart with a force-directed layout. With more than 100 customization settings for nodes, links, legends, labels, and other aspects, you can create the perfect chart for your report.
Network PRO excels at visualizing hierarchies, making it easier to understand relationships and faster to find answers. Whereas the Pin version of Network PRO is designed for dashboards, the Filter version will seamlessly integrate in your reports to make them more interactive and insightful. With cross-chart filtering enabled, selecting one or multiple nodes will dynamically filter data in other visuals and vice versa.
Main Features:
- Automatic relationship detection
- Up to nine levels of hierarchy
- Dynamic node scaling based on value
- Node, link, and label customization
- Force-directed layout
- Touch support
- Cross-chart filtering
🌐 Get Drill Down Network PRO on AppSource
Product Page | Documentation | LinkedIn | Report Examples
Decomposition Tree – All Expanding
Custom visual helps to break down a metric or a key performance indicator (KPI) into its contributing factors. It can be used to identify the underlying causes behind a particular metric’s value.
The following features make it unique compared to native decomposition tree visual.
1.It allows users to expand all nodes simultaneously.
2. Users can add a target measure as well.
3. It allows 2 color patterns. The first pattern allows separate colors for each level. The second pattern allows a node and its descendants to have different colors from other nodes. This is depicted in the image below.
4. It allows users to select whether to display children only or all descendants on node click.
5. It allows users to adjust tree height, tree width, bar height.
6. It allows different label positioning such as under the bar, start and end.
Watch a demo of these features in a short video.
Download this visual from APPSOURCE
Download demo file from APPSOURCE
For more information visit excelnaccess DecompositionTree or contact zubair@excelnaccess.com
EDITable for reference/master data management with approval workflow, audit & governance
EDITable provides a self-service platform that helps you manage reference data, master data & meta data for your Power BI reports and applications.
It complements your Master Data Management (MDM) solution and offers a lightweight alternative for business users that supports both reference data (such as Customer Region and Product master) and flat tables (such as Price List, Contracts, Projects, and Discounts).
HIGHLIGHTS
- Edit dimensions & measures in flat tables
- Designed for business users requires minimal help and setup from IT
- Supports LIVE sync with data residing in Azure SQL, Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, RedShift, and Postgres
FEATURES
- Bulk Insert/Edit values
- Custom approval workflows (table-level, dimension-level, and value-based)
- Supports Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD) Type II
- Change log for enabling audit
- Conditional Formatting
- Commenting & Collaboration
- Data integration with webhooks
- Granular user activity permissions (add/delete/edit rows)
- Columnar permissions (ACL)
Use Cases
Master Data, Reference Data, Meta Data, Flat table editor
Additional information
- Check out our 2-Min Editable Introductory Video.
- Visit our website to learn more.
- Replay a webinar and experience a LIVE DEMO.
- Read the documentation.
- Follow EDITable on LinkedIn and YouTube.
- Have a question? Post it in our community.
- Schedule a demo with our editable team.
ADWISE Advanced Column v1.0
Advanced Column is easy to use column chart for comparing one or more values with clearly interpretable difference lines. It is best suited for comparison of values between time periods, categories or quantities. As usual with our visuals, you can apply multiple formatting options to render the visual the way you want, to be easily readable for users and to correspond with your corporate identity. You can still use all the standard features of column chart such as Axis X, Y formatting, gridlines, values + totals, legend and so on, but with the ability to compare any columns with “drag & drop” simplicity.
This brand new visual brings to you these features:
- Difference lines – Configurable lines to clearly show compared columns.
- Values – Show difference in percentage or absolute values or both.
- Shapes – You can choose from rectangle, circle or ellipse with configurable positioning.
- Positive/negative difference – Distinguish differences with colors and symbols to be readily identifiable by users.
- Series labels – Use changing labels for Axis X, e.g. when you use calendar months for column names.
- Series formatting – Format data and total labels per category (legend).
- And other formatting – Thousand and decimal separator, interaction with other visuals, empty data screen.
See more info (including ChangeLog) on our website: ADWISE Advanced Column
This visual offer in-app purchases and comes with a 30-day free trial version. We want you to have full experience of our visual during the trial period, so all features are accessible in the trial.
You can use basic functionality without watermark. Licensing and pricing plans can be found in our FAQs: ADWISE Advanced Column FAQs
Don’t forget to try our other successful visual ADWISE RoadMap / Gantt.
Developers
Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR) update (preview)
The Power BI enhanced report format (PBIR), along with Power BI Project (PBIP) files, provides a great source-control and co-development experience due to its folder representation of the report definition in a public JSON format.
During the PBIR launch a few months ago, we acknowledged important service limitations and commitment to addressing them in the upcoming months.
The following features are now available for reports using PBIR format:
- Publishing a PBIR report from Power BI Desktop.
- Downloading a PBIX file using PBIR format from a workspace.
- Uploading a PBIX file using PBIR format to a workspace.
In the coming weeks, PBIR reports will be supported within Power BI Apps.
For further information regarding PBIR format, please refer to the documentation.
That’s 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!
