Welcome to the November 2024 update.
We’re thrilled to introduce Copilot in Power BI Mobile apps, bringing AI to your fingertips for a smarter, faster way to explore data on the go. This month’s update also includes a new Path layer for the Azure Map visual, making geospatial analysis even more powerful by helping you easily map connections between multiple locations. We’re also introducing the OneLake catalog, the latest evolution of the OneLake data hub, offers a unified platform for data engineers, data scientists, analysts, and decision-makers to browse, manage, and govern data seamlessly—all from one intuitive interface.
There is a lot more to explore, please continue to read on.
Join us for Ignite 2024 Chicago
Join us online, November 19-21st for Ignite 2024 to learn about the latest innovations in Data & AI. The sessions will cover solutions that help modernize and manage intelligent applications, safeguard data, and accelerate productivity while connecting with partners and the Data & AI community. To attend online, register here.
Register for FabCon Las Vegas 2025
Join us at FabCon Las Vegas from March 31 to April 2, 2025, for the ultimate Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQL, and AI community-led event. With more than 144 sessions, 18 pre- and post-conference workshops, unique community experiences, a dedicated pre-day for partners, all-day Ask-The-Experts hours, 20+ expo booths, plus after-hours events and socials you don’t want to miss, FabCon has it all! Register today to grab the early bird discount and use code MSCUST for $150 off registration.
Get certified in Microsoft Fabric – for free!
Get ready to fast-track your career by earning your Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification. For a limited time, we will be offering 5,000 free DP-600 exam vouchers to eligible Fabric Community members. Complete your exam by the end of the year and join the ranks of certified experts. Don’t miss this opportunity to get certified.
Explore the newest Fabric certification for Data Engineers
We are excited to announce a brand-new certification for data engineers. The new Microsoft Certified: Fabric Data Engineer Associate certification will help you demonstrate your skills with data ingestion, transformation, administration, monitoring, and performance optimization in Fabric. To earn this Certification, pass Exam DP-700: Implementing Data Engineering Solutions Using Microsoft Fabric, currently in beta.
- Version number: v: 2.138.782.0
- Date published: 11/11/24
Contents
- Copilot and AI
- Reporting
- Modeling
- Define new measure in DAX query view quick queries
- Metric sets: a new era of metric management in Fabric (Preview)
- Announcing performance improvements for models with calculation groups and format strings in Excel
- DLP policies restrict access action for semantic models (Preview)
- Semantic modeling in Visual Studio Code with the new TMDL extension (Preview)
- Data Connectivity
- Developers + APIs
- Visualizations
- Other
Copilot and AI
Copilot in Power BI mobile apps (Preview)
We’re excited to announce the release of Copilot in Power BI mobile apps! This new feature brings the power of AI directly to your fingertips, enhancing your mobile experience when you’re on the go, offering a quick and simple way to dive into your data.
With Copilot in Power BI mobile apps, you no longer need to analyze data by yourself. Copilot provides report summaries and insights, allowing you to make informed decisions anytime and anywhere. Imagine a sales manager effortlessly pulling up an executive summary of the latest sales report with a single tap, or a maintenance technician asking for real-time machine-performance insights while on the factory floor.
To start using Copilot on your mobile app, simply tap the Copilot button located in the report header (that meets Copilot requirements in Power BI) and choose whether you want to get a summary or to look into insights. Copilot will deliver a response based on your request. You can then copy and share the response or keep interacting with Copilot by choosing from the suggestions at the bottom. These suggestions can help you tweak the response or create new requests.
For more details about Copilot in Power BI mobile apps, check out our full blog post.
Copilot summaries in subscriptions (Preview)
Need to extract insights from Power BI report images in your email or quickly digest a summary of your Power BI report? Subscribe to Copilot summaries for Power BI reports. This feature is available with Standard subscriptions and for reports in a copilot-eligible capacity.
Learn more about using Copilot in Power BI and Fabric.
Set up the copilot summaries for Power BI reports that you subscribe to as follows:
1. Select the ‘Subscribe’ option from the ribbon for the Power BI report that you are interested in.
2. Select ‘Standard Subscription’.
3. You can subscribe to the report.
Learn more about creating report subscriptions
4. Add a copilot summary to the email delivered by the subscription. If you are eligible, your subscription will receive the Copilot summary by default.
5. You can ‘Preview summary’ to view a sample of what the summary might look like.
6. Test your subscription by selecting ‘Send Now’ after you Save the subscription
Note: ‘Send Now’ will deliver the email with the copilot summary to all recipients.
Email Sample:
This feature will roll out gradually over the next few weeks and is not available in Gov clouds.
Reporting
Path Layer for the Azure Map visual
This month we’re introducing a new feature to the Azure Map visual that takes geospatial analytics to the next level, the Path layer. The Path layer provides users with the ability to visualize geographic connections between multiple points. Whether you’re managing logistics, analyzing network traffic, or tracking asset shipment across the globe, this feature allows you to visualize connections between multiple geographic points in an intuitive and interactive way.
The Path layer is ideal for several key scenarios, for example:
Network Analysis: For industries like telecommunications, the Path Layer enables you to map intricate network connections. It helps identify inefficiencies, monitor data flow, and strengthen critical infrastructure.
Flight Path Analysis: Airlines can leverage the Path Layer to visualize and analyze flight routes, improving air traffic management. It helps identify new route opportunities and enhances the overall passenger experience by optimizing existing routes.
To get started, add the location for each point using either a geocoded location field, such as city names, or latitude and longitude. Then, differentiate between the paths by adding a field to the Path ID field well and indicate the order of connection through the Point Order field well.
For example, you could create a map showing the path of two ships with the latitude and longitude of their positions for each point, a path field with a unique identifier for each ship, and a timestamp for each location to make sure the points are connected in the correct order.
You can also format the visual by controlling the color, transparency and width of the lines, and even turning off the bubble markers for each point. If you turn off the bubble layer, you’ll only see a bubble on hover showing you the closest point to your pointer location. Paths are interactive as well, so you’ll get tooltips on hover and be able to cross-highlight other visuals by clicking on points of the lines.
There are a couple of unique behaviors to be aware of with this new layer. First, when using a drill hierarchy with the path layer, the visual will automatically drill down to the lowest level and will not allow you to drill up, as points in the path would be aggregated at higher drill levels.
Next, if you have a location that’s part of multiple paths, the bubbles for that location show up on top of each other. If you want to click on the bubbles underneath, just hover on the line associated with its path, and it will float to the top and be selectable. Lastly, you can further break down the paths by adding a legend, which will create unique lines for each legend value of a given path ID.
An additional point to consider: Currently, the path layer operates mainly in conjunction with the bubble layer. Once you add a path to your map, you’ll see that the filled, cluster bubbles, heat map, and 3D column layers are all disabled. Additionally, while you can use the path layer in conjunction with reference layers, the reference layer will be static. It’s currently unsupported to mix data bound reference layers with the path layer.
The path layer is still actively rolling out to all regions. Depending on what region your tenant is in, you might not see the path layer in the Power BI service through the weekend. Be sure to check the report after publishing, and if you don’t see the layer, it should be accessible within a week.
We’re excited to see what you create with this new path layer. Give it a try and let us know what features you’d like to see next!
Visual calculations (Preview)
The work on visual calculations continues as usual and this month we are adding a highly requested item: support for exporting! You can now export data from visuals that contain one or more visual calculations or hidden fields.
If you export data, hidden fields on a visual are not included in the export, unless you export the underlying data. The results of visual calculations are always included in the export, except when exporting underlying data, since visual calculations are not part of the underlying data as they only exist on the visual.
Learn more about visual calculations in our documentation.
Small multiples for the new card visual (Preview)
With this month’s update, we’re enhancing the Card visual with a new version that retains all familiar features and updates, while adding advanced functionality and an improved user experience with small multiples.
This new feature is currently in preview with the new Card visual, offering an excellent opportunity to experience the capabilities of the feature.
Small multiples are a series of similar card tiles displayed together in a grid format, each representing a different category or dimension of data, allowing for easy OKR comparison and analysis across multiple fields.
This newly added feature enhances data organization, visual clarity, and performance, making it easier to analyze and present data effectively. To try it, navigate to Options and settings > Options > Preview features > New card visual, and make sure it’s enabled.
Another advantage of the new Small multiples feature is the extensive customization it offers, including:
- Small multiples layout: Choose from single column, single row, or grid, and customize the number of small multiples, rows, or columns displayed.
- Advanced formatting options: Enhanced features such as font styles, color-coding, and conditional formatting.
- Border and gridlines: When enabled, individual controls for borders and gridlines permit the customization of style, width, color, and transparency.
- Overflow style: Options include continuous scroll or paginated, to smoothly navigate through multiple cards without overwhelming visual space.
- Headers: Choose from horizontal or vertical orientation, top or left position, customizable alignment, font, color, transparency, padding, plus background color or image.
To create a card visual with Small multiples, first select the Card (new) icon from the visual gallery on the Build visual tab in the Visualizations pane, then select some data fields from the data model to add them to the data field well.
To categorize your cards using small multiples, choose a data field from the data model and add it to the Small multiples data field well.
This new feature provides extensive customization options, such as layout, advanced formatting options, conditional formatting, borders and gridlines, overflow style, and customizable headers.
Small multiples for the Card visual in Power BI offer another great enhancement that significantly improves data organization, visual clarity, and performance.
The Core Visuals team continues to add new features and greater functionality, and we’re committed to improving our capabilities. We invite you to explore this new feature and share your feedback with us in the comment section below as we continue to improve our Card visual capabilities.
We understand your eagerness to delve deeper into Small multiples and grasp how these enhancements fulfill the highly requested features by our community. Find out more and join the conversation in our dedicated blog, where we unravel the details and share the community-driven vision behind these improvements.
New visual – text slicer (Preview)
Introducing the new text slicer, now available in our core visuals gallery.
This month brings the arrival of the new text slicer in Power BI offering new possibilities for both users and the organization.
Enable the new text slicer by navigating to Options and settings > Options > Preview features > text slicer visual to ensure its selected, and restart Power BI.
The text slicer works by allowing users to input specific text that acts as a filter, targeting a designated data field. By entering the desired text in the slicer’s input box, the slicer effectively narrows down the dataset to display only the relevant information that contains the entered text. This functionality is particularly useful for handling large datasets, where quick and precise filtering is essential for efficient data analysis and presentation.
To create a text slicer visual, select the text slicer icon from the visual gallery on the Build visual tab in the Visualizations pane. This adds a visual placeholder to the report canvas.
To filter a dataset, add a text field from the data model to the Field well to establish the text slicer’s functionality, allowing it to filter the dataset based on user input. Simply add text to the slicer’s input box, select the apply icon, or press enter, and the slicer immediately filters the dataset, displaying results on the visual.
As shown here, the new text slicer introduces a powerful and customizable filtering tool in Power BI:
- Improved user experience: The text slicer provides users with a straightforward and efficient method to filter input.
- Unmatched customization: It offers numerous options for users to tailor their filter experience to their needs and preferences.
- Competitive edge: This new feature makes our platform superior to other analytical tools currently on the market.
The Core Visuals team is dedicated to enhancing our features and functionality continuously. We are committed to advancing our capabilities and highly value your feedback. Kindly share your insights regarding this capability in the comments section below.
We know you’re excited to learn more about the Text slicer and other new enhancements tailored to our community’s needs. Discover the specifics and join the discussion on our dedicated blog, where we break down the details and share the community-inspired vision driving these updates.
Modeling
Define new measure in DAX query view quick queries
Creating measures in DAX query view just became even easier. The quick queries option available from the context menu of tables, columns, or other items in the Data pane, now includes Define new measure.
This will create a new query table with the syntax started for you to create a query-scoped measure DAX formula ready for you to add your own DAX formula and then run when ready.
Learn more about DAX query view and the other quick queries available at DAX query view – Power BI | Microsoft Learn.
Metric sets: a new era of metric management in Fabric (Preview)
The public preview of metric sets is now officially available for both service and desktop. This is a transformative new feature designed to redefine how organizations manage and consume metrics.
The Fabric Metric Layer’s home base is the Metrics Hub in Power BI and brings powerful capabilities to streamline metric management, ensure consistency, and foster trust in data across your organization.
Metric sets will be available for both consumers to browse, and creators to use in reporting. A service experience consisting of visualized metrics and data exploration will allow end users to answer their data questions. The desktop experience will allow creators to connect to the most authoritative metrics to visualize in reports.
Key Features:
- Curated Collection of Metrics: metric sets will serve as a collection of measure pointers to source semantic models and include key dimensions so end users and authors alike can unambiguously understand how a metric should be grouped or used.
- Rich Consumption Experiences: Users can explore and consume metrics from the metric set itself, allowing for deep insights and understanding. Copilot summaries and multiple visuals will be available for users to scroll through and go from data to insights in seconds.
- Efficiency: Consumers no longer need to rely on report creators to answer questions or build custom reports for specific needs. Consumers can leverage the Explore dialog to dig deeper into a given metric in an environment where everything in the data pane ‘just works’ because the dimensions have been curated specifically for the metric.
- Discoverability and Reuse:
- Consumers – Metrics are discoverable via search, and metric sets can be promoted, endorsed, certified just like any artifact so that users trust it. Consumers can also leverage the Explore dialog to dig deeper into a given metric in a safe environment where everything in the data pane ‘just works’ because the dimensions have been curated specifically for the metric.
- Authors- Metrics in Desktop: In the November release of desktop, metric sets will be available to connect to and use in desktop reporting. You can access the metric you want to include in your model via OneLake datahub / data catalog and connect there. This ensures your reports use the most up to date and authoritative measures available.
Learn more about Metric Sets here.
Stay tuned for the upcoming milestones and get ready to transform your metric management experience with Metrics Hub!
Announcing performance improvements for models with calculation groups and format strings in Excel
We’re excited to announce significant performance improvements for MDX queries on models with Calculation Groups and Format Strings!
The latest changes should greatly improve the performance and reliability of operations in Analyze in Excel on models that include one or both of:
- Dynamic Format Strings for Measures
- Calculated Items with Format Strings
This extends to other MDX scenarios as well, so all client applications that use MDX to query semantic models with the above will experience the same performance benefits.
DLP policies restrict access action for semantic models (Preview)
Purview data loss prevention policies for Fabric now enable admins to restrict access based on the sensitive information detected within their semantic models’ data.
When Purview compliance admins configure DLP policies for Fabric, they now have the option to decide if upon detecting sensitive information they would like to block access to the data. They have the option to prevent guest users from accessing the data or to restrict access for all users except the data administrator.
In Fabric, data admins will see an indication that their data is restricted, and can act, such as reporting an issue to the compliance admin or override the policy rule.
Consumers, such as guest users who have been now restricted from seeing this information, also see an indication letting them know that an organization policy revoked their access, and if they attempt to see its content, they will not be able to.
With restrict access action, compliance admins get further control and enforcement when uncovering sensitive data in their Fabric tenant.
Semantic modeling in Visual Studio Code with the new TMDL extension (Preview)
Power BI developers, the new TMDL Extension for Visual Studio Code in public preview enhances your TMDL editing experience, boosting semantic model development.
The Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) is designed to make model representations readable, editable, collaborative, and reusable. The TMDL Extension builds on these strengths of TMDL with several key features that create a rich development experience:
- Semantic Highlighting: Improves readability by applying different colors to parts of your code based on meaning, making it easier to understand the structure and functionality of your TMDL briefly.
- Error Diagnostics: Helps you identify and fix issues in your code by clearly highlighting errors and providing you with detailed messages that guide you on how to resolve them.
- Autocomplete: Offers intelligent suggestions while you type to speed up your workflow, reduce the chance of errors, and help you understand your code options
With more features on the way as we continue to build out the extension!
By working in Visual Studio Code, you can also take advantage of other fantastic tools on the platform such as:
- Source Control: Seamless integration with Git, allowing you to track changes, collaborate with team members, and version control your semantic models.
- GitHub Copilot: An AI coding assistant that will help you write code faster, generate TMDL from natural language, and quickly apply advanced bulk edits to your models.
Download the TMDL Extension on the Visual Studio Marketplace and see how you can accelerate your semantic model development today!
Data Connectivity
Snowflake connector updates
- Queries sent to Snowflake by Power BI will now include a query tag with additional information about the context, such as whether or not it comes from Direct Query. This feature will be rolled out for the Power BI Service over the course of November and will reach Power BI Desktop and the On-Premises Gateway early in 2025.
Developers + APIs
Fabric Git: TMDL format for semantic model export
As part of our commitment to providing a developer-friendly experience that enhances team collaboration, Fabric Git integration will begin exporting semantic model definitions as Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) in the coming days. This change will replace the use of a single JSON file (model.bim) with Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL).
Due to its folder representation and readable format, TMDL offers a significantly improved source control experience. This enhancement facilitates tracking commit history and simplifies the resolution of merge conflicts, particularly when compared with TMSL.
If necessary, you can continue to obtain the TMSL representation of your semantic model by using the Get Semantic Model Definition REST API or XMLA Endpoint.
Semantic model client library updates
Client applications, such as Excel or Power BI Desktop, connecting to Power BI semantic models now benefit from better performance due to an automatic conversion of legacy connection strings (e.g. pbiazure://*) to the XMLA endpoint. Requests are routed directly through the XMLA endpoint, reducing intermediary steps, speeding up request processing, and decreasing the likelihood of errors.
You may need to update your firewall rules. See the troubleshooting document for details.
Please ensure that you are using the latest Analysis Services client libraries for optimal performance when connecting to Power BI semantic models.
Visualizations
KPI by Powerviz
KPI by Powerviz (Power-BI Certified) is a powerful custom visual for Power BI that allows users to visualize and create eye-catching and advanced Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Key Features:
100+ Prebuilt KPI templates within visual and option to create own templates.
Design:
- 16 layers and 40+ chart variations to create infographic designs.
- Rich customization, formatting options, and color styles.
- Create KPI objects in layers, combining charts, metrics, and icons.
Analytical:
- Data Visualization Types:
Categorical: Compare values across categories.
Comparison: Analyze differences between values.
Composition: Show parts of a whole.
Progression: Display trends over time.
Actual vs Target: Compare actual against targets.
- Formatting Features: Configure the Ranking, Sorting, Axis, Number-Formatting, Tooltip, Gridlines, Data Labels and Series Labels for visuals.
- IBCS Theme Support: Includes deviation bars, series labels, and consistent color scheme.
- Small Multiples: Support for all chart types – Fixed/Fluid with change chart feature.
Other features include multi-categories comparison, Highlight values, Layer Flexibility, and more.
Business Use Cases:
Sales Performance, Financial Health, Customer Satisfaction.
- Try KPI Visual for FREE!
- Check out all features of the visual
- Step-by-step instructions
- YouTube Video Link
- Learn more about visuals
- Follow Powerviz
Zebra BI Tables 7.3
With Zebra BI Tables 7.3, users can harness the power of a rich text editor to create and update visual comments with remarkable efficiency. This feature empowers you to style and format your text, add bullet points, and insert hyperlinks, making your report a one-stop shop for the entire team by just leaving links to reports and documentation different stakeholders might have an interest in. Well-structured comments can streamline communication within your reports, enabling readers to quickly grasp essential insights.
By emphasizing what’s important and explaining why it matters, you guide your audience towards critical information and promote clarity and understanding. This clarity is crucial in any business environment, where time is often limited, and strategic decisions must be made swiftly. Effective comments reduce the time and effort required to generate actionable insights, which ultimately improves report quality and effectiveness.
Incorporating thoughtful commentary can transform a standard report into a powerful tool for decision-making. With Zebra BI Tables, enhancing your reports with meaningful comments has never been easier — all so you can communicate your message more effectively and engage your audience better.
Check out our video example of the rich text editor in Zebra BI Tables 7.3.
Waterfall PRO by ZoomCharts: the most interactive waterfall visual for financial data
Waterfall PRO by ZoomCharts is the most user-friendly and insightful way to visualize financial data, combining incredible user experience with customizability and powerful features. It also seamlessly cross-filters data across multiple visuals, allowing you to create truly interactive Power BI reports.
Main Features:
- Custom Sequence: Have full control over the column order with the Sequence field.
- Drill Down: Use multiple categories to enable drill down directly on the waterfall chart.
- Automatic Subtotal Calculation: Display subtotals even if you don’t have them in your data.
- Rich Customization: Customize X and Y axes, legends, tooltip content, and adjust the appearance settings for positive, negative and total columns separately
- Thresholds: Display up to four constant or dynamic thresholds as lines or areas.
- Cross-chart filtering: Dynamically filter data across multiple visuals.
Get Drill Down Waterfall PRO on AppSource
Lollipop bar chart by Nova Silva
We’re thrilled to continue receiving your valuable feedback, and we appreciate your contributions in helping us improve our visuals.
In our latest Lollipop Bar Chart release for Power BI, we’ve added a much-requested feature: secondary markers. This allows you to display not only the primary value but also add context by including a secondary value marker.
This new feature integrates seamlessly with all other Lollipop Bar Chart functionalities, such as transforming the Lollipop Bar Chart into a dot plot by removing the connecting bars, as shown in the second image. This also removes the requirement to start your numeric scale at 0, allowing you to have a closer look at the values and their differences.
While standard bar charts are great for comparing a single measure across categories, they can become cluttered with larger datasets (>10 categories). The colored bars may fill too much of the chart space. To address this, the Lollipop Bar Chart offers a cleaner, more efficient alternative, minimizing clutter without sacrificing clarity.
Try the Lollipop Bar Chart for FREE now on your own data by downloading it from the AppSource.
Questions or remarks? Visit us at: https://visuals.novasilva.com/.
Sales velocity chart
The Sales Velocity chart is a unique tool for analyzing product sales and profitability in specific countries. It uses a combination of pie charts, needles, and color coding to visually represent key metrics.
Key Features:
- Needles: Length indicates sales percentage; width reflects profit margin.
- Pie & Circle Size: Reflects overall current sales in a country.
- Color Coding: Green (high profit), Yellow (moderate), Red (low profit).
- Sales Trend Dot: Gray (no data), Red (decreasing sales), Green (increasing sales).
Benefits:
- Visual Clarity: Easy to understand data representation.
- Dynamic & Scalable: Handles large datasets and adapts to screen size.
- Interactive Features: Tooltip displays details, premium options offer filtering and logo removal.
Use Cases:
- Businesses can identify top sales regions and areas needing improvement.
- Financial analysts can pinpoint high and low profit contributors.
Note:
For more information, visit our website.
Watch a short video here.
Read this Sales Velocity Chart documentation.
For any queries, questions, or requests, please write to us.
New book: Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI
We recommend the new book ‘Data Visualization with Microsoft Power BI’ by Alex Kolokolov & Maxim Zelensky, the first book that delivers DataViz best practices for Power BI!
- 25 chapters about different chart types.
- 40 visuals: from default to advanced from the AppSource gallery.
- 400 color pages of an exceptional quality.
The book is suitable for non-technical professionals as well as for experienced data analysts. It consists of 3 parts:
- Classic Visuals. Authors explain how to choose charts for basic types of analysis and avoid common mistakes. How to set up interactions and put visuals together on a dashboard.
- Trusted Advanced Visuals: Different options and data requirements for waterfall and bullet charts, Gantt, tornado, funnel, Sankey, etc.
- Risky Advanced Visuals. ‘Eye-catchy’ charts that may confuse the average user. We explain use cases and offer simpler alternatives.
Book features:
- Beautiful examples, specific use cases for charts.
- Step-by-step guides on how to set it up in the app.
- Data preparation tips and tricks.
- Quizzes to consolidate the learning material.
“I want to inspire people to use Power BI for more than just reporting. I want them to create brilliant dashboards and tell interactive data stories!” -Alex Kolokolov.
The book is now available on Amazon.
Other
Support for Power BI language settings when a paginated report is viewed on the Power BI service
When a localized paginated report is published to the Power BI service, the viewer of the report will now see the report in the preferred language that they have selected in the Power BI/ Fabric Settings page. Previously, the rendering of the report was determined by the server settings.
Learn more about viewing localized paginated reports on the Power BI service.
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!
