It has been a crazy last few months from the Microsoft BI stream, and finally as the year winds down they appear to also be looking to take a much needed break.

So this week’s BI-NSIGHT is short and sweet.

Power BI – Developers details

It was great to see how Microsoft have embraced not only the end users for Power BI, but also started adding a whole host of additional features and information for the Power BI Developers.

One thing that caught my attention in their blog post was the following: Over time, we intend to fully open this Developer experience up so that anyone can build Content Packs and submit them to us for publishing to the gallery.

I think that just as they did with the Visuals, by opening or creating a framework, this will allow a lot of additional companies and users the ability to be able to submit content packs to be part of Power BI. And this can only then lead to having more sources, which in turn means a greater possibility for there to be a content pack in the future that you can simply click and have all your data there ready to use.

I look forward to see what they can bring to the table going forward.

You can find more details here: Power BI for Developers: A look back at our Developer & ISV ecosystem efforts this year

Power BI – Weekly Service Update

I was a bit late in terms of getting my blog post out, but at least I can include the latest Power BI weekly service update details.

One of the things that I really enjoy with the weekly service updates, is that very often what the Power BI team is putting into the Service, does filter down into the Power BI Desktop.

So this week there are some great new additions.

The pinning of your entire report as a dashboard is fantastic. As I often found that the dashboard tiles, whilst it is very good often meant that you could not fit in all the information that you want to see. This does not mean that you should overcrowd the dashboard. But at least you can put in meaningful information.

As well as now having the ability to manually refresh the tiles is great. As I was actually having this problem last week.

For both using the Images as slicers and the Visual Interactions, this has been mentioned before and it does make it a lot easier to create your reports and filters so that they have more functionality.

You can read up all about the updates here: Power BI Weekly Service Update

Power BI – Visual Scroller

Once again the quality of new Visuals that are coming and being released in the Power BI Visuals amazes me.

And this visual is once again a really elegant design, but at the same time it is really powerful.

I can see a lot of organizations or companies using this going forward. It takes up a small amount of screen real estate but it can show so much meaningful information that scrolls through.

You can find it in the Power BI Visuals Gallery here: Power BI Visuals Gallery

SharePoint 2016 – Whitepaper

With both SQL Server 2016 and SharePoint 2016 around the corner it is great to see that they have released a white paper.

Specifically, it details the information around how using Excel within SharePoint will be handled and implemented in SharePoint 2016. Which also relates to the Power Pivot Add-in.

I have downloaded the paper and I have no doubt that there will be a wealth of other information that will be within the white paper. I always find the white papers a really interesting read and often find out some really great details.

You can use the following link to find the blog post: White Paper Published: Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016

You can download the White Paper here: Deploying SQL Server 2016 PowerPivot and Power View in SharePoint 2016

Excel 2016 – Use Excel like a Boss

There is a great blog post by the Office team.

It show cases how easy it is to use the Business Analysis features directly out of Excel when you start up Excel.

From each of the sections, you can see the Cash Flow, Stock Analysis and Calendar Analysis.

This just is another great feature that can be used to analyse your business.

You can read about all the details here: Use Excel 2016 like a boss