Here are this weeks updates

Power BI – May Service Update

There is a whole host of updates to the Power BI Service this week, and some great additions.

The first improvement is the increasing in the file size to 1GB. And whilst we all know that the compression is really good with Power BI and Power Pivot, there are times when you want to store more data. And now there is that capability.

The next update or improvement is the Row Level Security (RLS) in which they have added group support for Azure Active Directory (AAD), the ability to test your RSL roles and the capability to define and apply RLS to direct query models (on selected sources)

Along with this they have created the ability to have your favorite dashboards all in one place, which I think is great, because with so many dashboards it can become quite difficult to go through them all. And now you can easily have your favorites in one place.

And finally the improvements with Analyze in Excel in that it also will honor the RLS models from the cloud.

The entire RLS offering is quickly showing that they now are working towards a complete SSAS Tabular model as a PaaS.

You can find all the details here: Power BI Service May Update: File Size Increase to 1 GB

Power BI – Q&A for Enterprise Gateway

I have started using the Q&A features in Power BI fairly often as it is quick and easy to get the report results that I want. And I have had no doubt that this would eventually come to the On-Premise version of SQL Server Analysis Services (SQL Server 2016). And it is finally here which is great to see.

Not only that but they have also enhanced the Q&A experience so that it will prompt you to which answers you are looking for from your data.

Another amazing enhancement is that prompting to switch filters or values in your question, which can then lead to more insights into your data.

And then finally now the ability to be able to question your data on the report level also.

You can read up on the details here: Power BI Q&A for enterprise gateway connected data sources now available in public preview

Power BI – Solution Templates

Here is another great option from the Power BI team, in which I have no doubt that this will be further enabled as time goes on.

What this does is to create a solution template for creating a full data mart or data warehouse. Where it will do an initial full load and then complete an incremental load over time. This also enables the solution for the product to be created and then deployed for the customers. And by using this solution template everything is handled by the solution.

So for the end users they can view and interact with the reports and dashboards.

You can find more information here: Announcing Power BI Solution Templates

Power BI – Username()

The details of the blog post URL below are based on how to ensure that you can see if your Username() DAX function returns the correct username in the Power BI Service.

It very quickly and easily explains how to achieve this. All that is required is to enable Row Level Security (RSL) to your model. After which it will then display the correct username.

Here are the details: Using Username() in DAX with Row-Level Security

Power BI – Local Excel Files Upload

It is great to see that you now can upload your local Excel files to Power BI. I know that some people do not have access to Office 365 and this will give them the ability to use the Power BI service and get the insights that they are looking for.

You can find more information here: Using Excel Reports in Power BI is Easier than Ever with Local Files Support

Power BI – Download Dashboards / Reports to a .bpix file

It is great to see that this work has started. As it is something that I have been thinking about for quite some time.

I have sometimes uploaded a Power BI Desktop file, and then made changes in the cloud but not replicated the same changes to my Power BI Desktop file.

This will be awesome to see once it is completed.

Power BI – Forecasting Feature

I know that this was announced during the Data Insights summit and great to see that they have started working on this. And that it will give some capability to give forecasting to your data models.

I am interested to see how it will work once it has been implemented.

Power BI – Intro to Power BI for the Excel User

There is a webinar which will go through how to user Power BI for the Excel User

You can find details here: Webinar: Introduction to Power BI for the Excel user

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