Exploring New Features Coming to Power BI in Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft's Power BI continues to evolve as a pivotal tool in driving a data culture where everyone, at every level of an organization, can confidently make decisions based on data. With the introduction of new features in Microsoft Fabric, Power BI is poised to enhance its capabilities further, empowering individuals, teams, and organizations alike. Let’s explore what's new and what's planned for Power BI in Microsoft Fabric.

Empowering Every Individual with Power BI

Power BI is designed to make working with data intuitive and efficient. With a user experience reminiscent of Microsoft Office, Power BI now leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to boost productivity. One of the standout features is Power BI Copilot, a transformative tool that automates steps in the report creation process. This means users can now interact with data more naturally and efficiently, allowing for a smoother workflow from data ingestion to report generation.

Enhancing Team Collaboration

Deep integration with Microsoft Office is one of Power BI’s strengths. This integration extends to Teams and Outlook, bringing data insights directly into the tools where collaboration happens. Whether in meetings, channels, or chats, Power BI ensures that data-driven decision-making is at the forefront of every discussion.

Scaling for the Enterprise

Power BI is built to scale, meeting the demands of large enterprises with centralized administration, governance, and industry-leading security capabilities. IT departments retain full control and visibility, ensuring that the organization’s data remains secure and compliant while being accessible to those who need it.

Key New Features

Copilot for measure descriptions

Use Fabric Copilot for Power BI to create descriptions for your semantic model measures. The description property is important documentation for your measures, as only the measure name and description are available to those who are making reports from your semantic model. Fabric Copilot can make your semantic model documentation easier by generating measure descriptions for you. This is when you create the measure and when you update the DAX formula of a measure, at each stage Copilot can quickly generate or update the measure description, helping you maintain your documentation and maintaining your workflow.

Copilot for DAX query generation

DAX query authors can use Copilot for DAX query generation to write, edit, or explain DAX queries on their model data. Ask what data you want to see returned and Copilot will give you the DAX query. Copilot can also be used to add a column or formatting to an existing DAX query, even finding the column in your data. Finally, Copilot can explain what a DAX query is doing or tell you more about specific DAX functions. This is a huge productivity boost in authoring DAX queries.

Live edit of Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI Desktop

Previously, you could only create and edit semantic models using the incredible query performance of Direct Lake for your lakehouse based reports from the Power BI service. With live edit of Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI Desktop, you can also edit these semantic models in Power BI Desktop. Access the full power of semantic modeling capabilities and Git integration provided by Power BI Desktop for Direct Lake models! You can live edit semantic models by selecting the semantic model in OneLake Data Hub and simply click “Edit”.

Metrics Hub

The Metrics Hub will enable users to promote consistent, reliable metrics in large organizations. This will help end users become more independent in the discovery and consumption of standardized metrics that are surfaced from corporate semantic models. Report creators will no longer have to rely on and understand complex models with dozens of tables, or independently create and maintain new versions of the same measure that already exist. Additionally, this metrics layer will unlock previously siloed data.

Because you can use metrics across Fabric, users can leverage key metrics in data solutions like Python notebooks. The Metrics Layer will help business users find what they are looking for quickly and easily without a dependency on IT, and make reliable, data-driven business decisions. It will add confidence in metrics by making visible business definitions and where the data is coming from, showing they are derived from trusted sources and allow for analysis of different dimensions of a given metric.

Visual calculations UI Updates

Interacting with visual calculations will soon be as easy as point-and-click, thanks to a new UI update. This feature, similar to Excel, will extend pre-canned templates for popular calculations and improve support across all visuals.

Customize content access request messages for Power BI organizational apps

This feature will allow setting a custom entry point for each Power BI organizational app to an organization's internal access management system from Power BI Access Request messages. This feature will be especially useful for organizations that rely on security groups to control access to content.

Organizational Apps for Fabric

Power BI apps are one of the easiest ways to package up and securely distribute Power BI reporting to your organization in a customized and easy-to-use experience. Previously one Power BI app could be created per workspace. With apps rebuilt for Fabric, multiple organizational apps can be created per workspace. Apps can contain more than just Power BI items like reports, but Fabric items like notebooks too. And the app experience can be customized in new ways with more control over the color (choose any color), navigation style, and landing experience.

The upcoming features in Power BI within Microsoft Fabric are set to make a substantial impact on how individuals, teams, and organizations work with data. Whether you're looking to streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, or scale your data operations, Power BI’s latest updates ensure that you have the tools needed to succeed in today’s data-driven world.

For more information on Microsoft Power BI contact us at +27 (21) 205 3650, email us at info@allonline365.com or visit our website www.allonline365.com.