This week has been another great week, with some great service updates in the Power BI space, as well as another release for SQL Server 2016 mobile reporting!

Power BI – February Service Update

There have once again been a whole host of Service updates to Power BI. And as per my previous blog posts I will touch on the ones that are most relevant.

Below is a list of all the Service Updates

Sharing

• Share with users outside your organization
  
• Request access to a dashboard
  

  Admin Portal
  

• Easy user management with a link to the O365 Admin Center
  
• Disable publish to web
  
• Prevent users from publishing content packs to the entire org
  
• Disable sharing content to external users
  

  Quick Insights
  

• Quick Insights when you publish Power BI Desktop files
  

  Dashboard
  

• Web content widget
  
• Video widget
  
• Zoom on dashboards
  

  Connectivity
  

• Connect to files on your team SharePoint site through a URL
  

  One of the most common features was the ability to share your dashboards with external people. It is great to see that Microsoft have released this functionality. I have no doubt that this was part of the embedding of the code into a Web Page.

  I am sure that this will be used by a lot of people, so that they can send it to customers or people who are part of the company or business or on a contract.

  One thing to note is that if you use the Power BI Pro features, then the people who you share it with externally will also have to have the same license.

  It is great to see that there now is an admin portal (If you have got the correct permissions), due to as the size and complexity of Power BI grows, there is the need to manage what people can do. And as they said this is the first iteration of the admin portal. I have no doubt that there will be a whole host of additional items added into the admin portal.

  The quick insights is a great feature because I often think not everyone will have the actual insights to create amazing dashboards. But along with this, even though it is an automated process it might give you insights into your data which you never thought about in that way before. So I think that there is no harm in looking to what insights it gives to you.

  Under the widgets I always knew that this would be the start of things that can be embedded into Power BI. And this definitely gives some great features to enrich your dashboards. As often it does not all have to be only about data and visualizations. But also a video or other content to enrich what you are trying to portray.

  You can read more about it here: Power BI Service February Update

  SQL Server 2016 – Mobile Publisher Preview 2

  

  I personally know that we are going to be using the Mobile Report features in SQL Server 2016. And that in the past the Mobile publisher was a big buggy and did not do things that you expected it to do. Now with Microsoft having control of the Mobile publisher and their vast experience in development and testing I have no doubt that over time this will become an amazingly easy and simple place to author some great reports.

  I am looking forward to using the mobile publisher to see what amazing things I can create.

  You can find out more information here: Mobile Report Publisher Public Preview 2 now available!