What’s New In Power BI? – Know How Will This Improve Data Visualization Further

Power BI from Microsoft is one popular and leading Data analytics and BI solution used by companies from various domains worldwide. Microsoft keeps adding new features to Power BI from time to time. It has finally released the June 2021 update with the addition of many interesting features. Along with features, some previews have also been launched for trial purposes. If the users receive them well, these features will be implemented in Power BI too.

When it comes to business intelligence, Microsoft Power BI from Microsoft Cloud is a good option for Data Visualization. With this, you can have complete and transparent access to your company data from any place and at any time. This makes working with data convenient even when you are on the move. To ensure you maximize the benefits of Power BI’s mobile capabilities and other features, it’s essential to have a solid understanding of the platform. For guidance on best practices and leveraging the full potential of Power BI, you can visit here for more information. By engaging with experienced consultants, you can learn how to optimize your data visualization and analytics processes, enabling your organization to make data-driven decisions even while on the go. Enlisted below are the new previews and features of Power BI, which Microsoft has brought forward in the June update:

Transparency slider feature for area charts 

With the new feature of the transparency slider, it is now possible to set the transparency of colored areas in your stacked area and area charts. This transparency was set to 60% by default in the previous versions, and this could not be modified as per user needs. You can adjust this transparency from the Formatting Pane by using the Data Colors Card. This can be useful for most power BI developers.

Visuals for paginated reports

This is a preview feature, which has been highly anticipated. Microsoft has announced a paginated report visual for Power BI reports, and this is now available on the Power BI desktop in the form of a public preview. With the help of this native Power BI visual, you will be able to extract any kind of paginated report, which has been uploaded to the Service in Power BI Report. This has been made possible for the first time. The power bi report developers will appreciate this feature.

With this feature in place, it is possible to wire up various fields from the Power BI dataset for being used as parameter values. Therefore, you will have a completely interactive experience with paginated reports, similar to any other kind of visual. This will be quite beneficial for power bi development.

Improvement of Q&A for inferred results

There are many questions from the end users which are incomplete or ambiguous. In such a situation, Q&A has to make some assumptions for producing visuals for such queries. In such scenarios, Q&A returns a natural language restatement or a visual depending on the interpretation of the queries of the end-user. However, it may be difficult for users to understand which part of the results was inferred.

In the new update that is released, this experience is improved significantly with the addition of the Showing Results for restatement with bolding of the inferences made by Q&A.

Small multiples: conditional formatting and responsiveness

In the June 2021 update, there are two new updates in the small multiples preview feature. Firstly, support is enabled for a responsive toggle in the General Card of Formatting pane. Various chart elements will gradually drop with responsive visuals as their size reduces. There will be more space for the plot area. For small multiples, adjustments have been made in responsive breakpoints to accommodate the potential presence of more than one plot area in the visual. Therefore, small multiple visuals will start dropping chart elements to make room for multiple plot areas.

Along with this, conditional formatting is also added to background colors and multiple small titles. You have to click the fx button adjacent to the corresponding choices in the formatting pane for launching the conditional formatting dialog. It is possible to set rules with which chart elements will be colored. With the help of this function, the background and multiple small titles will help in better communication of major data attributes.

Data Connectivity 

Innumerable updates, as well as new connectors, are made available with Power BI June 2021 update. Mentioned below is the full list of such connectors:

1. BQE Core- The new connector
2. SumTotal- The new connector
3. Assemble Views- The new connector
4. Azure Consumption Insights- The connector deprecated
5. FactSet Analytics The updated connector
6. Anaplan- The updated connector
7. Azure Databricks- The updated connector
8. Starburst Enterprise – The updated connector
9. Vessel Insight- The updated connector
10. Cognitive Data Fusion- The updated connector
11. Dynamics 365 Business Central The updated connector
12. Adobe Analytics – The updated connector
13. Google BigQuery- The updated connector
14. Snowflake The updated connector
15. Workplace Analytics The updated connector

DirectQuery support for Dataflows

Microsoft has unveiled DirectQuery Support for Power BI Dataflows. This feature is generally available for users. So, there is no need to import data into a dataset. Now the direct connection to a data flow can be established. This proves to be very useful in many situations and scenarios:

1. Serving data to customers in a well-managed manner.
2. Working easily and conveniently with big dataflows.
3. Minimization of orchestration needs.
4. Non-duplication of data between dataset and dataflow.

Using this capability, you have to explicitly toggle the compute engine after going into data flow settings. You will have to refresh the data flow before it can be used in DirectQuery mode.

Optimizations are being done constantly to underlying connectors for supporting import scenarios like folding query support for the dataset. There are also attempts to make connections to dataflow easy by bringing unified Power Bi dataflows and Power Platform connectors. Besides, plans of bringing a Dataflows connector to Excel are there.

New appearance for Power BI Windows App

This is a preview feature, which Microsoft released in the June 2021 update. In this, you will get to see the preview of the new appearance of the Power BI Windows App. It is highly impressive that the home page has been given an overhaul. You will find a centralized hub where all the Power BI content is located. You can access all the content quickly in a single place which makes working easy.

For enabling the new look and appearance of the Windows app, use the current version of the app from the store and open it. Right at the top of the screen, you will be able to see the New Look. If you want to experience the new look immediately, just toggle it on. There is no need to restart the app.

Wrapping up

Many more interesting features have been augmented in Power BI through the June update. The company will likely introduce some more features and enhance the preview features in future updates. To use these new features and meet your business data analytics goals, pick from the veteran power bi consulting services.

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