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:
Embedded analytics updates
Embed capabilities
New look for Embedded scenarios
New capabilities in embedding for your organization
New personalize visuals experience now fully support on embedded
New Q&A embed experience
Power BI APIs & life-cycle management
Export report to file bookmark by name
Power BI APIs now support Viewer role
Take over API for paginated report data source
Coming Soon!
Improved Analytics with Next-Generation Power BI Embedded
Power BI visuals platform updates
New APIs are coming soon!
Embedded analytics
Embed capabilities
New look for Embedded scenarios
All the improvements of the Power BI ‘new look’, for instance, navigation updates, will be available for Power BI embedded analytics scenarios. For more information check out Heads up: The ‘new look’ of the Power BI service begins rolling out soon blog.
By default, the report page navigation will be across the bottom as tabs. Getting the new page navigation on the left as a pane is possible programmatically (or by showing the report action bar).
To show the report page navigation on the left as a pane, you can use the `panes` object and choose the position of the page navigation.
var embedConfig = {
...
settings: {
panes: {
pageNavigation: {
visible: true,
position: models.PageNavigationPosition.Left,
}
}
}
};
An additional change that is coming to Power BI embedded analytics with the `new look` update is the new pane design for edit mode `visualizations` and `fields` panes. You will now get the same panes design as it appears on Power BI desktop and service.
New capabilities in embedding for your organization
Report consumer action bar
As part of the Power BI `new look` update, the Power BI action bar has been made simpler and organized so it’s easier to find actions. When embedding for your organization, consumers will now be able to use the Power BI report action bar.
To show the action bar for your report consumers, you need to add a setting on your embed configuration. The new settings is called bars (similar to the `panes` object we introduced a few months ago)
var embedConfig = {
...
settings: {
bars: {
actionBar: {
visible: true
}
}
}
};By showing the action bar you will get the vertical list of pages, which is the same experience as Power BI service. The page navigation can be collapsed through the action bar, giving the users more room to view and interact with the report.
Controlling where the report page navigation sits (on the left as a pane or across the bottom as tabs) is only available through the report settings and not supported programmatically if the action bar is shown.
To get full functionality of the action bar, which may include:
- Allow users to favorite the report
- Use Personal bookmarks
- Use Persistent filters
You will need to allow user state read and write permission for your application on Azure AD.
Personal bookmarks
Report consumers can create their own set of bookmarks for each report by capturing various states of a report page (including filters, slicers, and state of visuals), give them friendly names, and later return to each state with just one click! In addition, it is also possible to make any personal bookmark the default view, so your end-users can land on their favorite view of the report every time you open it.
Now, report consumers can use the same personal bookmarks they are using on Power BI service when consuming embedded analytics (only supported when embedding for your organization).
When embedding Power BI for your organization, personal bookmarks can be enabled in two ways. The first is showing the report action bar, by showing the report action bar you will allow your end-users to open and close the bookmarks pane as part of the action bar bookmarks button.
Another option is to show and hide the bookmarks pane programmatically, by using the panes object on the report settings. Read more about the panes object in the Embed Configuration Details article. You can also update the report settings in run time by using the Update settings API.
Read more about Personal bookmarks in embed for your organization.
Persistent filters
Persistent filters allow your users to retain the filters, slicers, and other data view changes that they make. Users no longer need to spend their valuable time slicing and dicing their report and repeating the same steps each time they return to the embedded report. With this feature, users will be able to pick up right where they left off last time and quickly get to their insights!
The same state will be shared both for consuming the report in embedded analytics and in Power BI service.
With the new action bar in embedded reports, the persistent filters “Reset to default” button will be available for your users, without implementing your own customized button.
Read more about Persistent filters in embed for your organization.
New personalize visuals experience now fully support on embedded
Personalize visuals feature empower your end-users to explore and personalize visuals all within the consumption view of a report. When you turn on personalize visual for a report, the option to personalize a visual will also be available when consuming embedded analytics.
After your end-users make tweaks to the visuals in the report, they can then save their modified view as a personal bookmark (only supported when embedding for your organization). If you don’t have personal bookmarks available for your report (or when embedding for your customers), you can also save the end-users modified view by using the Bookmarks APIs.
To capture a bookmark state with the user’s modified visuals, you should capture the report state with a new capture bookmark options object. By default, the user’s modified visuals will not be saved on the captured bookmark. See the example below to learn how to capture a bookmark state with the personalized visuals:
let capturedBookmark = report.bookmarksManager.capture({ personalizeVisuals: true });You can then save the bookmark states of each user as part of your web application code, and create a personalized bookmarks experience for your users.
The Bookmarks APIs supports both embed for your customers and embed for your organization scenarios.
New Q&A embed experience
The new Q&A embed experience is now aligned with the new Q&A visual.
When embedding Q&A to your web application you will now get an input box for you to type your questions and a few suggestions to get started with. Clicking any of the suggestions will automatically populate the input box with that question and show you the result.
The new Q&A embed experience is supporting all the new Q&A features you have for the report Q&A visual.
Read more about Q&A in Power BI Embedded
Power BI APIs & life-cycle management
Export report to file bookmark by name
On March 2020 we’ve introduced the Export report to PDF, PPTX and PNG files using Power BI REST API (Preview). The API included Bookmarks capabilities to export the current state of a report, after applying filters to it. Now we’ve added the option to export an existing report bookmark, using the name property, a unique (case sensitive) identifier which you can get using the bookmarks JavaScript API
Read more about export to file and bookmarks
Last, we’re happy to update, that two additional features are coming soon to further enhance this highly required API:
- Support report level filtering
- Export a single visual
Power BI APIs now support Viewer role
The Viewer role gives a read-only experience to users. This role should be assigned to users who need to view content within workspaces without the ability to modify it. Starting now, the Power BI APIs support this Viewer role. You can now add a user to a workspace with viewer role permissions.
// Use .NET SDK v3 AddGroupUser API to add a user with viewer role access permissions
pbiClient.Groups.AddGroupUser(
new Guid("de1006aa-2b7c-4d08-8794-a4ed96d03b20"),
new GroupUser
{
Identifier = "User@Tenant.com",
PrincipalType = "User",
GroupUserAccessRight = "Viewer"
});Take over API for paginated report data source
The new Reports – Take Over in Group Power BI API will allow you to transfer the ownership of paginated report data sources to the authorized user (the user that called the API).
For instance, to update the details of a data source, you have to be the owner of the data source. The take over API for paginated reports, will help take the ownership and update the data source.
The new API will be the equivalent of the existing API, Datasets – Take over in group, which allows you to transfer ownership of a dataset for Power BI reports.
// Use .NET SDK v3 TakeOverInGroup API to take over the paginated report datasources
pbiClient.Reports.TakeOverInGroup(
groupId: new Guid("6a1bdf3f-a919-41a3-8875-8c78e32ee0fe"),
reportId: new Guid("415f9474-a516-483c-94ba-889e2e2ce080"));
Coming soon!
Improved Analytics with Next-Generation Power BI Embedded
Last week, we have announced the Preview Availability of Improved Analytics with Next-Generation Power BI Premium. We’re happy to update that the Next-Generation platform will come soon to Power BI Embedded as well.
When available, the new platform will improve chargeback support for ISVs and will introduce lower entry points for premium features like paginated reports and others. Stay tuned for further updates on Next Generation Power BI Embedded availability.
Power BI Visuals Platform
New APIs are coming soon!
We continue to invest and support our community with new APIs and features to enable Power BI developers to create even more creative and amazing Power BI visuals!
Extending fetch more data API
With the 3.4 API release which we will roll out in the next couple of weeks, we will extend the fetch more data API.
To recap, the fetch more data API enables custom visuals to bypass the hard limit of a 30K rows data view, when additional data is needed. With the new 3.4 API release we will extend the fetch more data API’s functionality to support a new approach of loading data chunks. In addition to the existing approach which aggregates all the chunks requested, the API will support loading only the incremental data chunks!
More details in the Power BI November feature summary
Enhance testing of your developed custom visual
In the new Power BI Desktop release of November, we added a new feature that enables developers to override the AppSource published visual version with a local file version in both desktop and service. More details in the Power BI November feature summary
Conditional formatting support for custom fields
With the 3.5 API release estimated to be released by the end of this year. We will add support for the conditional formatting functionality, in a custom visual.
Stay tuned for more details in the coming blogs!
We highly recommend you update your visuals to the latest and greatest API releases to enjoy the new functionalities, and improvements.
That’s all for this post. We hope you found it useful. Please continue sending us your feedback – it’s very important for us! Have an amazing feature in mind? Please share it or vote in our Power BI Ideas.