Microsoft’s Power BI is the unified, scalable analytics platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI) that helps you gain the insights you need to make data-driven business decisions. One of the many benefits of using this robust platform is that Microsoft is continually working to make their solution better. As of November 2021, Power BI has released some exciting new updates and features, designed to optimize your user experience and make harnessing the power of Power BI even easier. Specifically, let’s take a look at some exciting enhancements in their reporting capabilities, data connectivity and visuals.
Reporting Capabilities Improvements
The first and perhaps biggest improvement to Power BI’s reporting is the release of their new Format Pane. Microsoft spent several months building a more consistent and convenient formatting pane that allows users to easily be able to format their reports exactly as they want, without the guesswork and trial and error that frustrated many users in the past. Other new advancements include a faster, more intuitive process for adding and managing page and bookmark navigators to your reports, the capability to sort information in the legend field, improved text formatting options, the ability to rotate your pie or donut charts, and more.
Optimized Data Connectivity
The true power of Power BI comes from its ability to help you derive insights from your data, which means it needs to be able to easily connect to that data. Microsoft’s latest updates include the launch of the of the Public Preview of the Azure Synapse Analytics Workspace (Beta) connector for Power BI Desktop that enables users to work with all Synapse Databases. According to Microsoft’s blog post, “The connector automatically discovers Synapse Workspaces that users have access to (via ARM). With the support for related tables and auto import of relationships from Synapse to Power BI Desktop, users can now use their Synapse data to speed up the time to results!”
Additionally, Power BI listened to their users’ idea forum and implemented their most popular request, creating a Google Sheets connector, built on top of the Google Sheets API, allowing out-of-the-box connectivity. Other new connectors have also been added and/or updated in this release.
Launch of New Visuals
Visualization enhancements include new ways of presenting data, including new AppSource visuals such as the Dual axis Scatter plot, Growth Rate Chart v1.1, and Process Mining with Power BI. These are all designed to make it easier to visually process data and results to improve the end-user experience. Additionally, now report creators can easily find report sample files in AppSource.com – a new “Download a Sample” button has been added that allows you to download the report sample so you understand how to properly use the visuals.
These are just a few of the major feature additions and enhancements included in the recent release of Microsoft’s Power BI. Make the most of your Power BI application by staying on top of the latest releases to see how they can improve your experience with analytics, data connectivity, visualizations and more.
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