Here are the BI updates for this week.

Power BI – Secure and Audit Power BI

One of the questions that is regularly asked with regards to Power BI is around how secure the data is. And along with that is how do people gain access.

This new update goes a long way not only to make Power BI more secure. But also to have the ability to look at the audit logs and see who is doing what if required.

I have no doubt that this will go a long way in helping organizations secure their information, as well as be compliant from an audit perspective.

You can find the details here: Secure and Audit Power BI in Your Organization

Power BI – Data Driven Parameters

This is another great blog post by Chris Webb where he explains how to use the new updates in Power BI which enable you to now use Data Driven Parameters. So now you can dynamically have your requested parameters come from a list, which can be derived from an existing data set.

You can read up about it here: Data-Driven Power BI Desktop Parameters Using List Queries

Power BI – Snowflake Data Connector

In this blog post from the Microsoft Power BI team they explain what the Snowflake data connector is and how to connect and use it.

I am sure that it will be very welcome for the existing and potential Snowflake customers.

You can read up about it here: Power BI enables connectivity to Snowflake

Excel – Get & Transform Updates / Power Query Updates

IT is good to see that the Excel team has also found a way to keep on adding features and updates to the Get & transform or Power Query within Excel. I often find that they get released first to Power BI Desktop, but then they soon make it into Excel also.

This month there is a whole host of updates as shown below.

As you can see from above there are additional data connectors, as well as changes in the query editor. As well as finally making it easier to extract Date and Time functions from your existing columns. Which in the past can be rather tricky?

You can find all the details here: August 2016 updates for Get & Transform in Excel 2016 and the Power Query add-in