Whilst I thought that this week might be a bit on the quiet side, I think that my previous suspicion is correct, and the wonderful people from Microsoft like to send out updates on a Wednesday.

Power BI for Android Devices

I was just browsing through twitter and I came across a tweet and clicked on the link, not entirely sure what it was about.

But it lead me to the Google Play store and I now could see the following below.

And here is the URL: Google Play Store – Microsoft Power BI

Power BI Designer vs Excel

I was reading another fantastic post by Rob Collie, where he gives some great insight for Power BI Designer vs Excel Where Rob mentions how Power BI can help out the Excel Pro’s, specifically in point number 7. What is assumed here by my interpretation is that in the future, Power BI Designer will be able to import a Power Pivot Model into Power BI Designer. I think that this would be fantastic as often I have created something in Excel, using Power Query and Power Pivot. And then a light goes off in my head, and I think this would be great to visualize in Power BI (Both for being in the cloud and mobile functionality). But when I have tried to import the Excel file, currently it only shows you any Excel tables. I do have a work around for getting your Power Pivot Model in Excel exposed within Power BI, which is the following and something that I have mentioned before. So here is the quick way to get this done.

1. It is quite simple.
2. All that you have to do is to create on Power View sheet within your Excel file, save your Excel file and then upload it into Power BI directly or via OneDrive.
3. Once it opens and you go into creating your report, you will see the entire Power Pivot Model exposed!!

Give it a go, it is really quick and easy to setup. You can read Rob Collies post here: Power BI Designer vs. Excel: What’s Microsoft Up To?

Power BI Refresh for On-Premise

This is something that I have been waiting for as well as voted for some time ago. And it fills me with great pride to see this being implemented. It shows that the people at Microsoft are hearing our voices loud and clear. I have to say that this is going to be a real game changer in my opinion for the following reasons:

• Firstly it is so simple to install and configure the Personal Gateway on your PC. Due to the installation being so simplistic, as well as not requiring Administrator privileges it means a lot more people will be able to install it and use the functionality.
• Next is they have updated how often you can refresh your data.
  • The have chosen the magic number of 8.
  • Which to me represents your 8 hour working day.
  • Perfect to get hourly updates.
• Integration with your domain account.
  • As we know a lot of sources integrate with your domain account, for single sign on, as well as easier controls on security.
• Refresh history, and sending emails on failure.
  • This is another great feature that we are used to having, in terms of getting emails when things break.
  • I do like it, that it will only send you an email when it fails. So no need to clutter up your Inbox.

You can read in more detail here about all the details: Refresh for on-premises sources is here!

Power BI Refresh from OneDrive

This is something that I did figure out a while ago, which I did blog about previously. It entails using Power Update to update your Excel workbook for On-Premise, then Power Update uploading the updated workbook to OneDrive, after which Power BI will automatically update. You can read about it here: Automating refreshing of Power BI Reports and Dashboards with Excel Workbooks and Power Update It is great to officially have some more information. And a lot of companies are starting to use OneDrive as their document storage solution. So now we know that it will update your OneDrive files connected to Power BI once every hour. Which in most instances is pretty good? Another thing to note, is that from my workings with SharePoint online, it actually uses OneDrive to store all the documents. So if you have SharePoint online, you effectively have got OneDrive, which you can then connect to Power BI. (Disclaimer I am not 100% certain which subscription to SharePoint Online this is for.)

Power BI Interface Updates

From what I could see there are two additional updates within Power BI. The first is the change of the new Minty Fresh theme, which is good to see. I would not be surprised to see an option later to select your own themes as you can do with Power View in Excel. The second update is within the Dashboards in Power BI. When you click on the Tile Details button you now get an additional option as shown below You can now set a Custom Link, which I think is really great, because this could link to anything. Which gives the report developer more options, as well as allowing the Report Consumer to be able to interact with an additional dataset which is outside of the report.