BI-NSIGHT – Power BI (Premium, May Desktop Update, New Pricing 01 Jun 2017, Pride 2017, Azure Consumption Insights Content Pack)
I always anticipate that the start of each month will be busy with the updates to Power BI, but this month is an exception with not only the release of the May Power BI Desktop Update, but also a new pricing and capacity model with regards to Power BI Premium. So let’s get into it shall we.
Power BI – Power BI Premium
With the update to now having Power BI Premium coming on 01 June 2017, this means that there is a whole host of changes, updates and additions that have happened with regards to the Power BI Service.
I am going to highlight below what I think is most relevant, and provide links further below if you want to go into more details.
Power BI Premium Overview
What Power BI Premium is in one sentence is the capability to license for capacity instead of per user.
What this means that in the past if you had 5000 users you would have to pay and license each user. With the Premium model you now can pay for a dedicated capacity and have 5000 users for a much lower price, or even lower depending on your specific requirements. What this means is that you now can get a more cost effective, as well as dedicated offering from Microsoft Power BI.
Below is a simple Infographic in terms of what will be available at Launch and what is planned in the future.
Here is the Cost Calculator that you can use to determine which pricing model will be the most cost effective.
Power BI Report Server
There is also the option to install Power BI Report Server on premise so that you can leverage Power BI on your own premises when there is the requirement. You can view the link here for more details.
Power BI Apps
There is also an announcement that they have evolved the content packs to now be called Power BI Apps.
With the advent of Apps you now can also create and develop them and add users and admins at a later time.
Along with this there will no longer be the requirement to leverage Office 365 Groups. Which makes it less reliant on Exchange for Office 365.
When you create an app you will also have the capability to be able to push it not only in the web but also to iOS, Android or Windows devices.
They have also outlined in their blog post the roadmap going forward.
And here is the link to their blog post: Distribute to large audiences with Power BI apps
One final thing to note is that the licensing for the Free model has added additional capabilities but the one BIG takeaway is that you will NO longer be able to Share your data with other users. As an initial workaround you can sign up for the Pro trial which will give you the required sharing functionality.
You can find the blog post details here: Microsoft accelerates modern BI adoption with Power BI Premium
Power BI – May Desktop Update
Along with all the other announcements there also has been the May Power BI Desktop Update. And below I will highlight some of the changes.
Report View
The relative date slicers is a very welcome addition as I have had instances in the past where I have wanted to keep data relative and it did take some creative thinking to achieve this. Which now can very easily be done with the relative date slicer.
It also good to see that they have ported over the functionality from the Matrix Preview into the Table Preview. Having very similar capabilities and a very welcome update.
The combo chart label enhancements are another small but important update, having worked with combo charts in the past, it makes it a lot easier to see the data label information.
Also having additional URL support is great as you can see above, as often it is not only web links that need to be linked.
Analytics
The biggest update in the May release is the capability to be able to create Report Level measures for Live connections to SSAS (Analysis Services Tabular) and Power BI Service datasets.
This is something that the community has been asking for a long time, and enables the report developers to further enrich the report model.
They have also added to new Quick Measures to make the total count of Quick Measures now 21
Data Connectivity
A new connector for Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights.
As well as the option when importing data from a folder to select the First File (So that you do not have to select it every time). But you still have the option to select the file from the drop down if required.
Query Editor
They have added 3 new transformations for Text Before, After or Between delimiter. So this can make it easier to get data that is in a specific delimiter format.
The final update is the ability to Unpivot Only Select Columns, what this does is it will ONLY unpivot the columns that you have selected. Even if more columns come into your table, it will only unpivot the columns you had selected initially.
You can find the entire blog post details here: Power BI Desktop May Feature Summary
Power BI – New Pricing June 2017
Below is the new pricing model for the different levels in Power BI from 01 June 2017
Power BI – Pride 2017
With this years Microsoft Data Insights Summit happening really soon, there is a call for people from the Power BI Community to show their pride with Power BI.
As you can see from the image above, those are the top 10 features, as voted by the community that they want you to use in your pride video.
You can find the blog post details here: Power BI Pride 2017: share your pride with the world!
Power BI – Azure Consumption Insights Content Pack
There is a new content pack available in which you can now use to view your Azure Consumption.
You can find more details here: New Power BI content pack for Azure Enterprise users