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Power BI May 2021 Feature Summary

Headshot of article author Jeroen ter Heerdt

It’s just over week after MBAS. The storm has quieted down, and life is back to normal. In case you have missed it, you can read our recap here. This can only mean one thing – it’s time for this month’s update! Next to all the things we covered at MBAS there are more things happening, including a new preview of visual tooltips. Next to that, you can now quickly create reports from SharePoint lists and sensitivity labels are now inherited downstream. There is so much more in this update, so read on!

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Here is the full list of May updates:

Reporting

Analytics

Modeling

Data connectivity

Service

Mobile

Visualizations

Template apps

Developers

Other

Check out the video below for a summary:

Reporting

 

Modern visual tooltips Preview

We’re excited to announce that we’ve released a public preview of new visual tooltips! These new tooltips include datapoint drill actions and updated styling to match your report theme:

You can turn on this new tooltip in Power BI Desktop by going to File > Options and settings > Options > Preview features > Modern visual tooltips:

When you enable this preview, all new reports will have the modern tooltips enabled by default; however, to enable these new tooltips for existing reports, you’ll need to navigate to the Report settings and turn on the Modern visual tooltips:

Drill actions

Once you enable these new tooltips, you’ll be able to drill down/up and drill through on a datapoint without having to use the right-click menu or visual header.

In this example we see the user is hovering over the Word datapoint, and they have the option to Drill down on the datapoint or Drill through:

If the user clicks Drill down, the visual will update to display the next level in the hierarchy and filter to Word.

If the user clicks Drill through, they will be able to see which pages they can drill through to:

Selecting Market Basket Analysis from the tooltip, will drill through to the Market Basket Analysis page and filter the page to Word or any other filters on the source datapoint.

Updated styling

Once you upgrade to the new tooltips, you may notice that the colors for the tooltips are now based on the report’s theme colors:

  • The background of the tooltips default to the Background elements
  • The text and icon color of the tooltips default to the First-level elements
  • The separator line and hover color on the tooltip default to the Secondary background elements

Here’s an example of the styling for the Default theme:

Here’s an example with for the Innovate theme:

Here’s an example with the Frontier theme:

If you want to customize the styling further, you can always update the Tooltip theme in the Customize theme dialog:

Additionally, if you want to format tooltips per visual, you can customize the settings in the Format pane:

Limitations and considerations

  • Currently, drill actions are not available in the tooltip for the following scenarios:
    • Report page tooltips
    • AppSource visuals (Custom visuals)
    • Matrix visuals
    • Line charts
    • Area charts
    • Stacked area charts
    • Decomposition tree
  • We currently do not have visual-level control to turn on/off the drill actions for the tooltips. You will need to enable/disable this capability at a report-level.

Try out these new tooltips today and let us know your feedback as we plan to make more improvements in the future.

Small multiples: now on by default and updated roadmap Preview

The small multiples preview feature is now enabled by default! We’d like to give it that extra bit of discoverability as we continue our work on it, giving everyone a chance to find and try it out. Additionally, this month, you can now set date hierarchies in your small multiple visuals to render as continuous axes. This is useful when using date hierarchies in line charts, for example, which will now allow you to see each line smoothly, without needing to scroll the axis horizontally.

Further, as we approach the end of this milestone, we’re releasing a new blog post containing reflections on feature work and updates to our roadmap. You can check it out here. Thank you for all your feedback on the feature so far!

New field list Generally available

We are happy to announce the new field list is now generally available for the Desktop and coming later this month for the Service. This change will create consistency for functionality and UI across views (where applicable) to address customer feedback and confusion. To see the complete list of changes please refer to our November blog release here.

 

Support for removing the sensitivity label in Desktop

While removing sensitivity labels isn’t something we recommend, we’ve added this capability for customers who need to remove the label from the PBIX file for some reason. To remove a label from a file in Power BI Desktop, select the Sensitivity (preview) button on the toolbar, and then click on the currently applied label (marked with a checkmark). This will unselect the label and remove it from the file.

Analytics

 

Smart Narratives and Anomaly detection Generally available

We are excited to announce the general availability of Smart Narratives & Anomaly detection. Smart Narratives now supports summarization of more visuals such as Maps, KPI, Gauge, Card, Multi Card, and Key Influencers and localization for 43 languages. Anomaly Detection and Smart Narratives are now fully accessible. Check out the documentation for Smart Narratives and Anomaly Detection. If you have any feedback for the team, please comment in our community post here for Smart Narratives and & here for Anomaly detection.

 

Q&A now supports DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services

We’re excited to announce that Q&A now supports DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services. Furthermore, as part of this update, it is now possible to use Q&A setup against Azure Analysis Services models. This should unlock multiple scenarios including:

  • The ability to define custom synonyms.
  • The ability to train Q&A custom business terms.
  • The ability to set featured questions.
  • The ability to see what questions were asked and see flagged questions from your end users.

As a reminder, DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services is in preview, so you’ll need to make sure the preview is enabled:

Modeling

 

DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services Preview

 

Lineage view and Impact analysis support

We are adding support for this feature to the lineage view and impact analysis both in the Service and in the Power BI Desktop. Regardless of if the dataset is in the same workspace as the source datasets or in a different workspace you can see it in lineage view and impact analysis. This helps you to:

  • Gain confidence in your data by understanding its sources
  • Troubleshoot your data flow to understand data mismatches and not up-to-date data
  • See what can be impacted by a change in dataset and notify contacts about an upcoming change

When you publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop, you can now see, in addition to reports and dashboards, what other datasets are directly connected to this dataset that you publish. You can then open the Power BI service to see more details and notify relevant contacts about the change.

Discourage Chaining

We’ve gotten some feedback and questions about the ability to limit which Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services datasets can be connected to through DirectQuery. Previously, the only way to limit this was through using third-party tools. Now, we’ve added in a switch into the Options dialog in Power BI Desktop, so you can easily limit DirectQuery-ing to datasets.

Q&A support

We’re excited to announce that Q&A now supports DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services. Read more earlier in this blog.

Read more about this feature in the original announcement.

Model View Updates

There are a couple updates to upgrade to the new model view experience this month. There aren’t any changes to the model view UI this month, but we wanted to make you aware that we have plans to make the new model view the default experience.

First, you may see a dialog that asks you to upgrade to the new model view UI. We want to ensure that you have enough time to upgrade your existing PBIX’s before this change is made automatically. Please keep in mind that if you upgrade, it will be permanent.

Second, when you create a new PBIX, the model view will have the new UI as its default. Thank you all for your continued feedback in this area!

Data connectivity

 

New Connector: EQuIS

We are excited to announce the release of the EQuIS connector in Power BI Desktop. Here’s more about the connector from the EQuIS team:

“The EQuIS data connector for Power BI unleashes the power of EQuIS data by enabling users to directly and easily access EQuIS data in Microsoft Power BI via the EQuIS Enterprise REST API. The EQuIS connector supports three types of user authentication: basic, API token, and organizational account (aka Azure Active Directory). Through a secure, encrypted connection to the EQuIS REST API, the EQuIS connector allows users to import a variety of EQuIS datasets into Power BI (including facility data, location data, and tabular report data). In addition to powerful analytics and visualization, importing EQuIS data into Power BI allows users to combine their EQuIS environmental data with a myriad of other datasets and share those data across organizations easily and efficiently with Power BI collaboration tools.”

Connector Update: Automation Anywhere

The Automation Anywhere connector has been updated. The A2019 cloud version has been updated and renamed to Automation 360 within the connector.

Connector Update: Vena

The Vena connector has also been updated. This updated version includes support for rollup operators from Vena.

Connector Update: Azure Databricks

The Azure Databricks connector has been updated with the following:

  • Better support for Unicode characters in Direct Query mode
  • The “Batch Size” option is now deprecated and removed from the Connector dialog but can still be provided in the Advanced (Query) Editor. Existing saved connections are not affected.
  • Minor improvements in query generation

 

Connector Update: Amazon Redshift

The Amazon Redshift connector has been updated to enable AAD Authentication in Power BI Desktop. Please note that this type of authentication is not available in the Service.

Connector Update: Vertica

The Vertica connector has been updated with a bug fix to support supplying a port value when connecting to Vertica.

Connector Deprecation: Microsoft Graph Security

The Microsoft Graph Security connector is being deprecated due to ending support from the data source service. This update will remove the connector from the “Get Data” experience in Power BI Desktop, discouraging new connections from being made. Existing connections and reports will continue to work for now. Up-to-date deprecation information can be found in our documentation.

Service

 

Quickly create reports from SharePoint lists Preview

Back in December, we launched a new create experience within the Power BI service that allowed you to quick explore your data with just a few clicks. Now, we’re excited to announce, as our first integration of this experience, the launch of our Power BI integration within SharePoint lists. This experience empowers SharePoint list and Microsoft List users to easily explore their list data with just a few clicks. If you’re part of the Targeted release experience, this capability will be rolling out over the next few days, and we’ll keep you updated once it rolls out in the Standard release in the future. Look out for a blog post with all the details in the next few days.

Reports, apps and dataflows endorsement Generally available

Last year we announced public preview of reports and apps endorsement and public preview of dataflows endorsement. Today we’re happy to announce that this capability is generally available.

With certification, we are providing organizations with a mechanism they can use to distinguish their most valued and trusted content. Content certification can be tightly controlled and documented via an admin control, ensuring that certification is a selective process that results in the establishment of truly reliable and authoritative body of content designed for use across the organization.

Any content owner can promote their content, thereby marking it as trusted and ready to be shared. This promoted content will get better visibility in a variety of Power BI experiences, making it easier for business users to discover the right data and make grounded business decisions.

Read this document to get started: Endorse your content.

Datasets hub improvements

When you click on a specific dataset in the datasets hub or in the workspace content list, you get to the dataset details page. In the dataset details page you can see some metadata about the dataset, actions you can perform and reports built on top of this datasets that you have access to.

With this release we are adding more metadata and more actions you can perform from the dataset details page:

  • Tables view. An essential piece of dataset metadata is the dataset’s tables and their columns and measures. With this improvement you no longer need to open a dataset in Power BI Desktop as it is all available as part of the dataset details page.
  • Action bar. we are adding action bar on the top of the page to make all the actions available from within the dataset details page.

Coming soon, we’re adding more actions to dataset details page, such as dataset refresh and view refresh history.

Quick Edit Paginated Reports from the Service

We have added an “Edit in Power BI Report Builder” option to allow for easier editing of Paginated Reports from the Service. Selecting this option will open the Paginated Report directly in Power BI Report Builder where edits can be made. When you’re done making changes to the report, you can publish it back up to the Service by selecting Publish.

You can find the new “Edit in Power BI Report Builder” option by clicking the ellipsis menu next to a Paginated Report in a workspace.

This option is also available in the File menu when you have a Paginated Report open in the Service.

Single sign-on enabled for new on-premises data sources for paginated reports

This month, we’re pleased to announce single sign-on (SSO) support for the gateway for your paginated reports backed by either a SQL Server or Oracle on-premises data source. SSO makes it easy for paginated reports to refresh data from on-premises sources while respecting user-level permission configured on those sources.

Once you have configured SSO through the gateway for either your SQL Server or Oracle data source, it’s easy to enable SSO for a paginated report using that data source. In the “Gateway connection” settings for your paginated report you can select your data source to “Add to gateway”. From the “Advanced settings” you can then choose to use SSO for your paginated report.

Downstream inheritance for sensitivity labels Preview

We’re happy to introduce the first-in-the-market label inheritance feature to provide more effective and accurate content labelling. With downstream inheritance of sensitivity labels, when you apply a sensitivity label to a dataset or report in the Power BI service, it trickles down to any other content that uses that dataset or report as its underlying data. With downstream inheritance, you don’t need to rely on multiple users to properly label and maintain the sensitivity of the data in use. Instead, you can trust the content creator (be that the dataset owner or the report author), as the one who is most familiar with the data, to tag the content most accurately with the proper sensitivity label as soon as it is published to the cloud. Read more here.

Mobile

 

Work side by side with other apps on your iPad or Android tablet

Being able to multitask with two apps open side by side on your mobile device can give you a big productivity boost. Now you can do this with the Power BI mobile app on supported iPad and Android tablet devices! While viewing the relevant data in the Power BI mobile app, you can write an email, take notes about important analysis insights, or even discuss the data with colleagues via chat! All this without having to switch between screens and lose the context. See our documentation for details.

Visualizations

 

New visuals

 

ADWISE roadmap v2.0

New version of popular and certified road mapping visual is out – much wanted zoom/scroll functionality added. Plan, roadmap, and time schedule phases and milestones using ADWISE RoadMap. This visual can help you present your project, product, or campaign plans, or visualize whatever else that can be time-scheduled.

New version 2.0 includes:

  • Zoom functionality. now you can zoom your RoadMap to see more details or fit larger datasets – horizontally as well as vertically.
  • Scrolling. Once your RoadMap does not fit into visual area (page), scroll bars appear.
  • Fixed height of rows (option). Rows remains the same height when you are filtering, adding more data etc. (more suitable for scrolling large data sets)
  • Progress bars. You can show progress (of project) within the bar.
  • Bars. Different types of edges/corners (square or rounded) to better suit your graphical preference.
  • Left axis. Right/left label alignment and text wrapping
  • Standard Power BI font added. Segoe UI was added.

More information about this visual. Find this visual in AppSource.

Bubble chart by Akvelon

Bubble Chart is one of the most popular custom visuals by Akvelon. We stay in touch with the Power BI community and released the new 2.2.2 version of the visual based our users’ most requested features.

The first feature is a second level of bubble labels. This is quite useful to show not only the name of the bubble, but also secondary information, for example sales per category. Users can drop columns from their data source into the “Secondary label” field bucket to use second level bubble labels.

The second most requested feature is word wrapping inside of bubble labels, on both levels. Now, Power BI users can show more text information on bubbles by wrapping text where needed. Users can find this switch in the formatting settings of the visual.

We also updated our visual to meet new certification requirements by Microsoft to prevent loading external resources into a visual. Now, users can take a column from their data source that contains a binary image and show it on a bubble surface. The previous version of the visual can be downloaded here.

Download the latest version of Bubble Chart by Akvelon from the AppSource and enjoy!

Cycle Plot by Nova Silva

Time series are great to clarify changes over time in measures. The line chart is the favorite chart for this data. But displaying results with a normal line chart can also hide important patterns. This happens when the measure contains seasonality. The Cycle Plot is a special line chart developed to show seasonal time series. It helps you to visualize trends within seasonal data. It has the strengths of common line charts, but without hiding cyclical patterns.

Let’s explain with an example. Say we are looking at items sold over several weeks. We expect to sell more on weekdays compared to the weekend. A line chart will show low values during the weekend and higher values during the week. However, it’s hard to tell if sales on Mondays are increasing or decreasing over the weeks. With the Cycle Plot a subplot can be created for each day. You can show the change in sales over time for that day. All the subplots together still show the seasonal pattern as well, as seen in the image above.

Don’t hesitate and try the Cycle Plot now on your own data by downloading it from the AppSource. All features are available for free to evaluate this visual within Power BI Desktop.

Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com.

Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts

Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts is a donut chart with touch-driven interactions and smooth animations, that allows you to make data exploration quick, easy, and insightful. Enjoy animated drill down, user-friendly navigation, and rich customization options. You can click directly on the slice to drill down into the data category, pick a chart type, and use rich customization options to control the look of the chart.  Among the main features of our Drill

What’s new in 1.7:

  • Built-in quick access links – When you place the visual on the report canvas, you are presented with quick links to useful sections of ZoomCharts website related to the visual.
  • Improved licence and trial experience – You can try paid features of ZoomCharts Drill Down Donut Pro for 30 days for free. After the free period, you can extend the free access by 30 more days with a free ZoomCharts trial.
  • Improved responsiveness  Resize your chart to any dimensions and still, get a perfect visualization.

To evaluate the Drill Down Donut PRO, download the visual from AppSource.

Learn More About Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts.

Drill Down Map PRO by ZoomCharts

Drill Down Map PRO by ZoomCharts lets you visualize location data on maps. This power bi map pie chart allows you to explore data by country, city, or use the lasso tool to create storable filters for custom regions. Add pie charts on top of the map to visualize clusters of data. Choose the tile server of your choice and use rich formatting options to style data. Get even better location data visualization on maps using the new updated Drill Down Map Pro version.

What’s new in 1.7:

  • Built-in quick access links – When you place the visual on the report canvas, you are presented with quick links to useful sections of ZoomCharts website related to the visual.
  • Improved licence and trial experience – You can try paid features of ZoomCharts Drill Down Donut Pro for 30 days for free. After the free period, you can extend the free access by 30 more days with a free ZoomCharts trial.
  • Improved responsiveness  Resize your chart to any dimensions and still, get a perfect visualization.
  • Numerous functionality and performance improvements

To evaluate the Drill Down Map PRO, download the visual from AppSource.

Learn More about Drill Down Map PRO by ZoomCharts 

Drill Down Pie PRO by ZoomCharts

Enjoy interactive drilldowns and beautiful designs with the new version of Drill Down Pie Pro by ZoomCharts. With touch-driven interactions, adjustable slices, and rich customization options this visual takes traditional pie charts to a next level.

What’s new in 1.7:

  • Built-in quick access links – When you place the visual on the report canvas, you are presented with quick links to useful sections of ZoomCharts website related to the visual.
  • Improved licence and trial experience – You can try paid features of ZoomCharts Drill Down Donut Pro for 30 days for free. After the free period, you can extend the free access by 30 more days with a free ZoomCharts trial.
  • Improved responsiveness  Resize your chart to any dimensionsand still, get a perfect visualization.

To evaluate the Drill Down Pie PRO features, download the visual from AppSource.

Learn More About Drill Down Pie PRO by ZoomCharts

graphomate charts 2021.2

Embed video: https://youtu.be/erQtj1Wsj1Q

graphomate charts follow the rules of good information design to create meaningful visualizations. Putting the basic principle ‘Information, not decoration!’ into practice our charts display your data according to IBCS or your own visual notation concept.

Especially if you design reports or dashboards for Controlling or Finances, you profit from the condensed display of KPI’s. Meaning that you’re able to show more data on the same page. Therefore, your data is better embedded into the context. With this overview perspective, decisions can be made more easily and strategical.

Choose between six chart layouts, which can be aligned horizontally to represent data over a time period or vertically to show elements in a structured manner. Via the graphomate property sheet you have access to the chart’s extensive feature set. Another big bonus: The so-called ‘Comparison Group’. All graphomate charts on a report page can be scaled within the same range to avoid misleading interpretation.

Profit from the seamless integration of our custom visuals and use filters and slicers side by side with the standard visuals.

Go ahead and try the graphomate charts by downloading it from AppSource. Find the detailed documentation here or explore a sample report.

graphomate matrix 2021.2

Embed video: https://youtu.be/IxF-fUXMtpM

In the area of finance and controlling it is common ground that data is mostly structured in a hierarchical way. Good news for you: the graphomate matrix allows the visualization of hierarchies in rows and columns. Displaying detailed data in a table format is still a high demand in reporting. A good layout design supports the recipient to read and understand the data quickly and easily. Therefore, like our graphomate charts, the graphomate matrix is IBCS compliant.

Our matrix visual enables you to create a table layout that meets all your formatting requirements:

• Featuring multiple highly customizable value formatting options for distinct columns,

• conditional styling of cells and values,

• the calculation of relative and absolute deviations,

• the display of correctly scaled In-Cell Charts as bar or pin and

• you can even write custom features using our cell formatting language or use frequently asked scripts from us.

Furthermore, the graphomate matrix allows both a hierarchical and a tabular (Cross Tab) view.

Go ahead and try the graphomate matrix by downloading it from AppSource. Find the detailed documentation here or explore a sample report.

Editor’s picks

The Editor’s picks visuals of the month are:

The Editor’s picks can be found in the in-product AppSource in Power BI Desktop and Service under Editor’s picks category.

Template apps

 

Dataflows Snapshot Analysis

Maintaining high data quality is a challenge in any BI or data-driven business application. ETL developers spend significant time creating complex data preparation processes with highly maintained pro-code tools or avoid automation and focus on executing long manual testing. As a result, data quality issues require more time and resources to detect and fix. To tackle this challenge, DataChant released two new Power BI apps that leverage Power Query low-code data-shaping capabilities to deliver a data quality monitoring solution that monitors snapshots of your data as it gets refreshed in Power BI and Power Apps dataflows.

The Power BI Dataflow Snapshots Analysis, and its sibling, Dataflow Snapshots Analysis – Power Apps allow you to monitor your ADLS Gen2-connected dataflows and analyze their auto-generated snapshots (Did you know that every time you refresh an ADLS Gen2-connected dataflow, the service stores a snapshot of the data?).

The apps read the snapshots and their CDM meta-data, profile the tables and look for changes in records over time. You can download the apps here and here. The following table summarizes the main differences between the two apps.

Dataflow Snapshots Analysis Dataflow Snapshots Analysis – Power Apps
Dataflow type Power BI Dataflow Power Apps Analytical Dataflows
Unique Audience BI Developers Business Applications, Citizen Developers
Shared Audience Auditors,

QA Professionals

# of dataflows One dataflow Multiple dataflows in a single environment
Authentication OAuth 2.0 with ADLS Gen2 Account Key for ADLS Gen2

Each app includes three report pages:

Dataflow Snapshots Analysis Dataflow Snapshots Analysis – Power Apps
Summary view

In the Summary page you can view the main data changes, review missing or new records, and find trends of key profiling metrics.

Differences view

In the Differences view, you can review all data changes in more detail in a tabular format and slice & dice the changes by tables, change types, or time periods. For example, you can filter the missing records or changes to a specific table by period.

Profiles view

The Profiles view highlights selected profiling metrics by tables, columns, and snapshot dates, and allows you to find anomalies in any column in your tables based on min, average, max, standard deviation, null count, distinct count, and row count.

 

Developers

 

Dialog boxes support for Power BI custom visuals

Today, dialog boxes can only open within the borders of a custom visual. The new API will enable developers to set the dialog box to open outside the custom visual’s borders.

For instance, a dialog box can be used to display additional information to the user, or to display a calendar for a date picker. In such cases, the report author doesn’t have to enlarge the visual boarder anymore, in order to see the full details the visual is generating.

The developer can display this data as a modal dialog box that will be triggered by a user action. The API is available with the 3.8 API release. For more information and a sample showing how to use the API, refer to this article.

Displaying a warning icon for a custom visual

The API standardizes the warning icon in the custom visual frame, in a way that is similar to the out-of-the-box visuals in Power BI. The API is available with the 3.7 API release. Read more here.

The warning icon is triggered by the visual and will show in reports when users hover over the visual.

Out-of-the-box visuals display the warning icon when there are queries, issues or invalid data. For instance:

  • Maps give warnings for values outside latitude/longitude valid values
  • Pie charts warn about negatives mixed with positives
  • Cartesian charts warn about infinity values being dropped

 

 

Other

 

Share and Collaborate in Excel for the web connected to Power BI

Last week at MBAS, we announced the initial availability of connected PivotTable refresh in Excel for the web. This new capability makes it easier than ever for organizations to share data and collaborate using Power BI and Excel. You can now explore, and refresh PivotTables connected to Power BI inside Excel for the web – and easily share these workbooks through OneDrive and SharePoint.

Additionally, with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) sensitivity labels fully integrated, you can control sharing to keep your data trusted and secure.

Let’s look at how to use these new features.

Create a PivotTable connected to Power BI

To refresh connected PivotTables in Excel for the web, you must create a workbook using one of these following entry points:

Download a connected workbook in the Power BI service

    1. In the Power BI service, open any report or dataset you have access to and use the “Analyze in Excel” option to download an Excel workbook connected to the underlying dataset. Learn more about Analyze in Excel.

  1. Save the workbook in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online.

Connect to Power BI dataset in Excel Desktop

    1. In the Excel Desktop ribbon, connect to a Power BI dataset using either “Insert > PivotTable > From Power BI” or “Data > Get Data > From Power BI”.

  1. Save the workbook in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online.

 

Refreshing connected PivotTable in Excel for the web

The workbook can be refreshed in Excel for the web with either of the following options:

Directly in the browser

The connected PivotTable can be refreshed by directly pasting the link to the workbook in your web browser. The link can be copied either by using the “Share” button in the workbook or the “File> Info > Copy path”. Users can now interact with the connected PivotTable in Excel for the web by dragging fields into the PivotTable area with the data staying connected to Power BI.

To ensure changes made to the workbook in Excel for the web, close any version of the workbook open in Excel desktop.

Share Excel workbooks in Power BI apps

A great way to deliver Excel data analysis and visualization across your organization is by including Excel workbooks in Power BI apps. Now that data refresh is fully supported, your workbooks in Power BI apps stay up to date. Learn more about publishing your Excel workbooks to Power BI.

Note: Power BI datasets built on live connections to Analysis Services are not currently refreshable in Excel for the web.

Follow our release notes to get the latest roadmap updates. Have a favorite Power BI + Excel feature idea? Post or vote for those ideas so that we know what’s most important to our users.

That is all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback and do not forget to vote for other features that you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review.

Also, don’t forget to vote on your favorite feature this month over on our community website. 

As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!
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