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Dive into the latest advancements transforming data analysis in Power BI! With features like Visual Calculations, performing complex computations within visuals is now seamless. Dynamic subscriptions for Power BI reports offer personalized reporting, delivering customized insights directly to recipients' inboxes. Additionally, Fabric Copilot simplifies adding descriptions to measures, ensuring clarity for all users. Experience the future of data analysis with Power BI's February 2024 update and elevate your data game today!
Visual calculations (Preview)
Introducing Visual Calculations: a groundbreaking method revolutionising how calculations are performed! With visual calculations, you can seamlessly conduct computations directly on visuals using DAX formulas. These calculations operate within the visual itself, tapping into data such as columns, measures, or previous visual calculations. This innovation streamlines the DAX writing process, making tasks like running sums or moving averages easily achievable, which were once daunting or near impossible.
To begin using visual calculations, you must enable the feature in Power BI Desktop's Preview features under Options and Settings. Once enabled, you can effortlessly add visual calculations by selecting the desired visual and clicking the "New calculation" button on the Home tab.
From there, you can input expressions directly into the formula bar, instantly updating the visual matrix with new calculations as columns.
Visual calculations support a range of DAX functions, including specialised functions like RUNNINGSUM, PREVIOUS, and MOVINGAVERAGE. These functions enhance readability and maintainability compared to traditional DAX methods. While still in its preview phase, this feature promises even more capabilities in future releases, encouraging exploration of its potential and providing feedback for further improvements.
For more details and instructions on using visual calculations, refer to Microsoft's dedicated blog post and documentation. Take advantage of this preview today to experience the future of simplified data analysis and computation in Power BI Desktop.
Dynamics subscriptions for Power BI reports (Preview)
Exciting news for Power BI users: Dynamic per-recipient subscriptions are now available in Preview for Power BI reports! Similar to dynamic subscriptions for paginated reports, this feature allows you to send personalised copies of a Power BI report to each recipient of an email subscription.
Imagine you have a sales report for your team and want to send a PDF copy to each salesperson weekly, tailored to show only their sales data. With dynamic subscriptions, you can achieve this by linking to a semantic model (previously known as the Power BI dataset) that maps recipients to specific filter values. When it's time to distribute the report, the system uses the latest data in the semantic model to determine who should receive the report and what filter values to apply.
To learn more about dynamic subscriptions and how to implement them, check out the official documentation. This new feature opens up possibilities for more personalised and efficient reporting, enhancing the way Power BI users share insights across their organisation.
Measure descriptions with Copilot (Preview)
Fabric Copilot for Power BI now offers a handy feature allowing you to add descriptions to measures in their semantic models. These descriptions provide essential documentation for those building reports, helping end-users understand the purpose of each measure. With Copilot's assistance, streamlining this documentation process becomes a breeze.
To add descriptions using Copilot:
Navigate to the Data pane of the Model view and select the desired model measure.
Click on the "Create with Copilot (preview)" button located under the Description textbox.
Review the generated description from Copilot and click "Keep it" to confirm.
The measure description is now in the Description box, ready for fine-tuning.
Need to update the measure later? No problem—simply click the button again to refresh the description.
Enable the public preview feature in Options > Preview features to get started, and learn more about accessing Fabric Copilot for Power BI on your tenant through the provided link.
DAX query view improvements (Preview)
In November 2023, a public preview of the DAX query view was launched, bringing about several improvements to enhance user experience. Now, boolean values are displayed in the Results grid, providing clearer insights into query results.
Additionally, a share feedback link has been added in Options > Preview features, welcoming users to contribute their thoughts and suggestions for further enhancements.
Furthermore, this release addresses a bug that caused the active query tab to lose its highlighting, ensuring smoother navigation within the interface. Another bug related to close brackets in nested IFs DAX formulas has been fixed, eliminating potential errors in formula execution. Moreover, users now have access to additional INFO DAX functions, including INFO.CHANGEDPROPERTIES(), INFO.EXCLUDEDARTIFACTS(), INFO.FUNCTIONS(), and INFO.LINGUISTICMETADATA().
For those interested in learning more about DAX query view and its functionalities, Microsoft provides comprehensive resources at the provided link. This empowers users to leverage the tool effectively for data transformation and analysis tasks in Power BI.
For the rest of the Power BI February 2024 update, click here, or if you would like to discuss Power BI for your business, email info@pt20.com.au or give us a call on +61 746 596 700.