Skip to main content

Microsoft Power BI blog

Power BI Service and Mobile November & December Feature Summary

Headshot of article author Nikhil Gaekwad

Senior Product Manager, Power BI
december 31, 2018

We saved the best for last. The final stretch of 2018 was incredible for the Power BI team. We announced some of our biggest previews, rolled out new features, and improved existing functionality across service and mobile based on your feedback. Before we ring in the new year, here’s a quick recap, in case you missed it:

Power BI data prep with dataflows (Preview)

In November, we introduced a public preview of Power BI dataflows to help organizations unify data disparate sources and prepare it for modeling. Now, analysts can easily create dataflows using familiar self-service tools. Dataflows are used to ingest, transform, integrate, and enrich big data by defining data source connections, ETL logic, refresh schedules, and more. In addition, the new model-driven calculation engine that’s part of dataflows makes the process of data preparation more manageable, more deterministic, and less cumbersome for data analysts and report creators alike. Dataflows are created and managed in app workspaces by using the Power BI service.  Learn more

Paginated reports in Power BI Premium (Preview)

On the topic of public previews, we also announced the preview of paginated reports in Premium. Now, you can view and interact with pixel-perfect paginated reports alongside the existing Power BI interactive reports in the service and mobile! You can publish and share paginated reports in your My Workspace or in app workspaces, as long as the workspace is in a Power BI Premium capacity. Learn more

Updates to the Premium Capacity Metrics app

We continued to enhance the Power BI Premium Capacity Metrics app to include new metrics for dataset size and count of datasets in memory. At the same time, we improved the navigation to make it easier for admins to view these metrics at a workspace level. The latest version (1.10) of the app provides a comprehensive view of workload operations such as dataset and dataflow refreshes, dataset evictions, dataset queries, paginated report data retrieval/execution, and system metrics in the capacity for the past seven days. If you are an admin of at least one capacity, check it out by installing the app or learn more about the latest update here.

Recommended Apps on Power BI Home

Last year, we released AI-powered app recommendations in AppSource to suggest relevant content to end users. Now, we are bringing this awesome capability directly to Power BI Home by adding a new Recommended apps section that surfaces the top apps that might be interesting to you. Check it out!

On-premises data gateway November and December update

We updated the on-premises data gateway in the months of November and December to have an updated mashup engine to ensure that the reports that you publish to the Power BI Service and refresh via the Gateway will go through the same query execution logic/runtime as in the latest Power BI Desktop version. Install the new gateway. Documentation on the new gateway, how to use it, and list of FAQs can be found here.

Shared creds, in-app URLs, and more on Mobile

We released a flurry of updates to the Power BI mobile apps. The iOS app now supports iOS 12 and watchOS 5. Here’s what we released for both Android and iOS:

  • Shared credentials – Signing in to Power BI from your mobile app just got a whole lot easier. With shared credentials, we simplified the sign in process by using other Office 365 app credentials on the device to authenticate the user against the Power BI service.
  • In app URLs – Links in reports that point to other Power BI artifacts will now open directly inside the app. This will enable authors to build custom navigation flows, for example, linking a report to a dashboard.
  • Show & copy data – We added to report visuals an option to show the underlying data in table format. Just use the visual “…” in the header, and you’ll see the ‘Show Data’ option. Once you see the table, you can long-tap to select and copy values assuming there is no restriction from InTune policies.

Release notes 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. Here’s what we disclosed recently:

Resources