Power BI enables individuals, teams, and organizations to infuse data into their day-to-day work. We’ve seen many users use our Chat in Teams capability to quickly communicate insights they find. We’re excited to expand on these capabilities by helping users share links to charts and updating how users copy images of visuals. Together, these changes help users communicate more quickly in the communication tool of their choice. This can empower more people to use data in their decision making.
Here’s an overview of these updates:
- Updated right-click menu for reports in the Power BI service
- New share option for charts
- Updated copy as image experience
We’re rolling out these changes incrementally, so you may need to wait a few weeks before they’re all available for you.
Updated right-click menu for charts in Power BI service
We’ve seen a lot of users who use the right-click menu for common activities like copying values. We’ve made it easier to find these by bringing them to the top of the menu. At the same time, we added options to copy an image, so all the copy options are available in a single place.
We also introduced a new Share sub-menu which we’ll talk about next.
New share chart options for visuals in reports in workspaces
We’ve seen many users use the Chat in Teams capability to share specific insights with their colleagues. We heard from users they’d also like copy links that open a web browser. That’s exactly what the new Link to selection option does.
When you right click a visual in a report, you’ll see a new Share menu with an option get a Link to selection.
When you choose Link to selection, you’re able to create a link to the specific visual, including all filters applied.
When you press copy, the link is generated, and you can copy it from the UI.
When you open the URL it automatically navigates to the visual and spotlights it.
This is great because the link:
- Takes you directly to the specific visual in the report
- Opens the visual in spotlight mode
- Includes the filters, slicers applied to the visual and report when the URL is created
- Allows people with existing access to view the visual
Link to selection for visual is exciting because it helps users share insights faster, in their preferred communication tool.
The Link to selection uses the same kind of deep-link as Chat in Teams and Share links with include my changes selected. You can find all the links you create on the Shared Views page. The visual link names are easier to find because they’re named based on the title of the visual.
Here are a few things to know about the share link with selection for visuals experience:
- The links work for “people with existing access”, just like Chat in Teams links. Users can request access after they open the link if they need access.
- When viewing the visual, all report permissions and row-level security are applied. Users may see different data when they open the link if they have different RLS roles.
- The option is available for reports in Workspaces. Reports in organizational apps are not supported with this release.
- If you use Microsoft Teams, the links will unfurl with the name of the report and take you directly to the visual that was highlighted.
- Links expire 180 days after the last time they’re used. Every time someone opens the link, the link expiration is reset to 180 days.
- Shared Views UI only shows links you (the currently sign-in user) created.
Updates to copy as image for visuals
We’ve made some updates to the copy as image experience to help more users collaborate faster. You’ll notice that the option in the visual header has a new label – Copy as image with caption.
In the right-click menu, we have two options – Image, and Image with caption.
Let’s see how they’re different:
- Image with caption offers the same experience you may be accustomed to. It copies some HTML that includes an image of the visual and some metadata like a link to the visual and filters applied.
- Image offers a new experience that only copies the image itself as an image file.
The new Image option is great because you can easily paste the image into an image editor or paste a chart into a presentation or document. The Image with caption option is also useful because it’s easier to help users open the source report and understand what data is included or excluded from the shared chart.
We also made some experience improvements to make the copy experience smoother. For example, the new final dialog shows the image you copied.
This dialog is great because if you navigate away from the window while copying an image (which could take a few seconds), when you come back just press the copy button so you won’t need to start over. You do still need to keep your window and report open for the copy to finish.
We’ve also added the copy image and image with caption options in for reports in Edit mode in the Power BI service. For newly created reports, save the report for the option to become available.
Helping users communicate in Outlook and Documents
Many users share data and insights in Microsoft Outlook and documents like Word files or PowerPoint presentations. These new capabilities are the next step as we continue helping users communicate data and insights. By supporting the way more people communicate, we’re helping organizations bring data into more of their decision making.
Here are a few more ways Power BI integrates with Office:
- Power BI Storytelling add in for Microsoft PowerPoint
- Power BI app for Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Office
- Use Excel to connect to Power BI data
- Quickly create Power BI reports from you SharePoint lists
We’re excited to see how you use these new capabilities. Tell us what you think in the comments below and submit ideas for improvements at https://ideas.powerbi.com.