I now expect if not on the last day of each month, but pretty close to the last day is to get the updates for the Power BI Desktop and potentially the Mobile Apps update. And this month I am not disappointed.

Power BI – November Desktop Update

Once again the Power BI Team has been very busy with a wealth of updates, as I traditionally do I am only going to highlight the ones that I think need to be highlighted. There are a lot of updates, so please be sure to read the blog post from the Power BI Team.

Below is all of the updates, so that you can see what they all are in case I do not cover them all.

NOTE: All the items below are clickable.

Report View

  • Analytics

  • Data Connectors

  • Query Editing Improvements

  • Reports View

    It is great to see that they are making not it easier to use the slicers, but also making it easier to read the information on charts when using hierarchies.

    Not only that but you can now also change the colours of the Axis Label and Title Colours for your charts.


    Along with this is all the additional conditional formatting that can be achieved in the Tables and Matrices which is shown with some images below.


    Analytics

    Every time I see an analytics update, I always am intrigued to see what feature or update they are completing this month. And this month the Power BI Team does not disappoint with the Clustering (Preview).

    I really like how they make it so easy to use the Clustering algorithm and it goes and does all the hard work for you. And not only that, but you can also add additional measures, as well as how many clusters you require.

    They have taken something that is quite complex and made it to appear to be fairly simple and easy to complete.




    Another quick note is that now Forecasting is available in the Power BI Service.

    As well as they made it easier to create groups from multiple places, as is often the case with Microsoft products is that there is more than one way to do the same thing.

    Data Connectors

    It is amazing to see how quickly they have added a connector for Azure Analysis Services, as I am sure that this is gaining quite a lot of momentum, as well as being a really great Microsoft BI product.

    Once again they have added another data connector for Spark, which I have no doubt the Big data, open source community will be happy with.

    As well as a whole host of additional improvements in the OData, Combined Binaries (CSV, Flat Files & Excel Files) and Web Connectors also.

    Query Editor

    This is the one piece of Power BI where I think it delivers so much value and they have improved it in this update with the Improved Function Authoring experience. Which makes it easier when working with functions.

    As well as add support for the % data type.

    And finally the ability to Expand the Query Dependencies view, which is a very welcome addition.


    You can read up all about it here: Power BI Desktop November Feature Summary

    Power BI – Mobile Update for November

    There are some really good updates for the Mobile App this month.

    Starting with the support for Intune Mobile Application management for Android devices. This is great to see as due to my mobile device being everywhere it can easily be lost or get into someone else’s hands. And by having the Intune capability it ensures that the devices are as secure as they can be with Power BI data.

    As well as support for links from within the iOS app.

    And the ability to centre a map to focus on your data in the Windows App.

    And finally the a quick and easy way to favourite your dashboards in the Android App.

    You can find all the details here: Power BI mobile apps feature summary – November 2016