>> Hello and welcome to
the Power BI, September 2021 Update.
In this video, we'll explore what's new
this month and see some demos of the highlights.
We have some exciting new features
for you in the reporting section.
First, we've updated the buttons in
Power BI to include many new formatting options,
including new shapes, custom icons, and more.
Before buttons were only
available in the rectangle shape.
Now with this release,
we have a much longer list
of shapes for you to choose from,
including arrows, chevrons, pills, and polygons.
You can now also add
custom images or icons for your buttons,
adjust the image fit,
control the icon placement,
set alignment and spacing,
and add special effects to your buttons.
You can find all of
these new formatting options in the format button pane.
For a full list of all of the new capabilities,
check out our September release blog post.
Next, we've heard and responded to your feedback.
Now you can turn off
total columns in your waterfall charts.
You'll find this new toggle in
the y-axis card in the formatting pane,
turn it on and the totals of
your waterfall charts will be removed.
Note that this will not affect subtotal columns in
your breakdown and please
continue sending us your feedback and ideas.
Next, we've also included a new option to
create and format series labels in your line charts.
Using this series labels option in the formatting pane,
you can turn on and format labels that appear on
the left or right sides of
your series categories in line charts.
The supplement the legend in providing clarity on
which lines are associated with which categories.
Rien will show us a demo of this feature.
>> Let's say I've got a line chart
showing sales over time,
like the chart I have in front of me except instead,
let's also say we've divided
the data into a bunch of different categories like so.
Then the legend tells us which
colors corresponds to which categories.
But the more lines you have,
the less useful it is to rely only on
the legend in picking out which line is which.
But now you can use series labels in
the formatting pane in your line charts instead.
These will put a text label
next to the lines in your chart,
adding to the readability of your visual.
You can put them on,
if you so choose the left or the right of your visual,
you can format them in any ways you wish,
in your normal text color, text size,
font family, whether or not
you want to turn on the background plates.
If you have a bunch of
other colors going on in the background and
you want to make sure that you have
good contrast on all of your text.
You can turn on word wrap
and you can change using maximum width,
how much space you allocate for
that text column on your series labels,
and how much horizontal space you
want allocate in your visual.
You can adjust all of this per series as well.
You can format them in a lot of different ways.
Line chart series labels as a feature should help address
certain type of visual clarity issue
that we've been hearing,
and we've got some other improvements
to their functionality planned as well,
including little guidelines to
help make some more space if you have a lot
of lines close together
and we don't really have that much room,
we can start making more space vertically,
and then we can just draw lines to those lines,
which will allow you to better associate
which text label goes with
which line and other improvements like that.
But with what we have now,
let us know what you think, let
us know how you think they could be improved.
Of course, we always take feedback on how
other visual formatting could be improved in general,
and we'll see what we can do.
Try it out, let us know.
Thanks for watching the demo.
>> Next, you can now apply MIPs
sensitivity labels to Power BI template files,
allowing you to properly classify
your files when exporting to a Power BI template,
MIP label and protection set on
the Power BI file will also
be applied on the new template file.
When opening template files for new reports,
that same MIP labels set will be
automatically applied on the new report as well.
In the analytics section,
we're excited to announce
the new Insights preview feature.
The Insights feature helps users easily
find and explore insights such as anomalies,
trends, and KPI analysis in
their data as they interact with and consume reports.
It proactively notify the user if there are
interesting insights in reports and
provides explanations for the insights.
This feature works out of the box on any report,
so consumers of the report can automatically gain
insights without any setup or
configuration by the report creators.
Insights is supported for reporting
premium and premium per user workspaces.
You can also use this capability
in non-premium workspaces.
If you have a premium per user license.
We have exciting new updates for you in modeling section.
First, we've made it easier to write filters for
the calculate and calculatetable functions.
You can now use aggregation functions in
the filters when they are used in Boolean expressions.
Please note that the newly supported syntaxes
improve the readability of the DAX expressions,
but don't impact the performance when
compared to the more verbose equivalent expressions.
We've also added a new parameter to
the XIRR function for
some situations where it is unable to
find a solution and returns an error.
This new parameter enables you to
specify an alternate result to return
instead of an error whenever
the XIRR function cannot find a solution.
Next we made it easier to use
the format function to format a value to
text based on a user's locale
by including it as a new parameter.
For example, a date time in
the English Great Britain locale will
return a string when the day precedes the month.
The time is written in a 24-hour format,
while a date time in
the English United States locale will
return a string with a month proceeds the day,
and the time is written in a 12-hour format.
Jeroen, will show us a demo of these improvements.
>> The XIRR function is
a financial function that can be used
to calculate the internal rate of return.
In some situations, however,
it's unable to find a solution and it will return an error.
Starting with this release,
we've added the fifth and optional parameter
that enables you to specify an ultimate result,
which then will be returned instead of an error whenever
the XIRR function cannot find the solution.
Let's look at a demo. On the left
here I have a table that contains cashflow information,
and beneath it is a measure that
leverages XIRR in general,
and will return a correct internal rate of return.
On the right, however,
I have slightly changed the input values.
XIRR expects at least one negative value in the payments.
As you can see, I changed from minus
10,000 to positive 10,000 so I expect an error,
and that's exactly what happens.
If you call XIRR right now,
you'll get an error.
If you click on this, it will tell you
that it wasn't able to find a result.
Now, that error is okay,
but if you want to return something
else like an ultimate value,
whenever that happens, you can now do so,
so that this release we added
a fifth parameter where I specified,
this is the same input, I also
specified the default value for the guess
which is 0.1 and then I specified minus .99.
Basically, if there's an error,
return minus 99 percent.
Exactly that's what's happening
here in this one here in the visual.
You can see that calculation now
returns minus 99 percent instead of an error,
which is way more friendly to your users.
>> The format function allows you to convert a value
to a text according to a specific format.
With this release, we've added
the ability to specify a locale,
for example, EN-US,
which is useful when working in international settings.
Let's look at a demo. As you can see here,
I have four measures,
each of which use format in a slightly different manner.
First on the left, I've got to
format the way you've been working with it so far.
Basically, I specify
the column reference, or in this case,
I specify the date time value that I want to format.
You could specify anything of course,
I'm just using date time as an example.
Notice that I'm using dt as
a way to express my date time values.
This is a functionality we introduced last month.
I'm specifying a date and a time
and then I'm telling it how to format.
As a result, I got
a specific format that
omits the time and I just get the date.
Now, what happens if I add the locale?
There's a new parameter, the third
parameter that allows me to specify that locale.
Here I specify the exact same thing,
but I added EN-GB for the UK.
But because there's still a format string,
you can see the result in
this second column is exactly the same as in
the first because the format string is
still present and that's being used.
Now, what happens if we omit the format string?
What if I don't specify
a format string blank for the second parameter,
but specify EN-US as my locale?
Now, suddenly that same value is now shown in
its full glory with date and
time in a format that makes sense for US.
Now, last column, the fourth column,
if I switch the locale to EN-GB for UK,
I can also specify, for example,
things like general dates or
just leave it blank for the format string.
You'll see that that exact same string is now being
formatted for what makes sense in the UK.
The PM is gone, and also
the day and month have switched places.
This is really useful when you're
working in international settings because it allows
you to relatively easily
switch the format string based on the user's locale,
and you can make dynamic formatting this way.
>> In the data connectivity and preparation section,
we have several new and
updated connectors for you this month.
First, we are happy to announce that
the Power BI connector in
Power Automate is now generally available.
This connector allows Power BI users to use
Power Automate to perform actions within Power BI,
including refresh a dataset,
perform exports on Power BI reports,
or perform an action when a data-driven alert is fired.
Over the coming months,
we will add additional actions
to the connector, so stay tuned.
We've also made the Assemble Views connector generally
available and made updates to the Azure Databricks,
Bloomberg Enterprise data and analytics,
Data Virtuality, Exasol, and Vena connectors.
To learn more about these updates,
check out this month's release blog post.
Next, we have some exciting announcements
for you in this service section.
First, we've added automated status roles
to the Power BI goals preview feature.
One of the most important attributes of a goal defined
within Power BI scorecards is its status.
With this new release,
scorecard authors will be able to automate
status updates based on
rules that govern the goal or sub-goal.
Users will be able to precisely
set when goals are on track or falling behind.
Scorecard authors will be able to set up rules
that automate statuses based on the value,
percentage of target met,
date conditions, or a combination of the three.
Once those rules are set,
authors can assign their priority by
simply dragging them into place.
Next, we've incorporated improved
filtering into Power BI goals.
Now you can easily view the goals labeled with
a particular status by
clicking on their associated summary cards,
making it easier than ever to see at
a glance what's at risk and what's on track.
We have also included keyword search,
making it easy to search for
specific goals and see how they're doing at
a glance without losing
context of the parent-child relationships.
Check out our monthly release blog for links to
documentation and places to provide feedback.
We have also implemented
a new set of APIs that allow you to
programmatically retrieve user and permission
information for most Power BI assets.
These can help Power BI administrators
support access review audits,
understand oversharing risks, and
see who has access to Power BI assets.
For this public preview,
we are releasing two types of APIs.
The first requires you to supply
an asset identifier and will
output the users and groups
that have been granted access to the asset.
The second is an extension to
the Scanner Admin API that adds
users or security groups with
their access levels for one or more workspaces.
When you need to spot check
access rights for a particular asset,
such as a report, a dashboard,
or dataset to assess the potential data leakage risk,
you would want to leverage the who
has access to an asset API,
and when you need to perform an access review
across the entire tenant or multiple workspaces,
the scanner API with
the user permission extension will come in handy.
To learn more about these APIs,
check out the blog post
linked in the video description below.
Next, to better support
the security constraints of some organizations,
we've added service principal support
for the Scanner Admin APIs.
Service principle is an authentication method
that can be used to let
an Azure AD application access Power BI APIs.
This removes the need to
maintain a service account with an admin role.
To allow your app to use the admin APIs,
you need only provide your approval once
as part of the tenant settings configuration.
We made this a public preview feature last December,
and are happy to announce general availability now.
With this release, we've added
support for the new admin APIs to
determine who has access to what Power BI artifacts.
Next, we've added some exciting new features
in the mobile section.
First, goals are now available in Power BI mobile apps.
Now, even while you're on the go,
you can monitor your goals and scorecards,
even check on their progress
all directly from your phone.
A new goals hub has been
added to the Power BI mobile app,
making it possible for you to view
your scorecards and closely monitor your assigned goals.
With the mobile apps new goals hub,
you can stay on top of your targets
from anywhere at any time.
To keep your goals up-to-date,
you can update values using
either the quick checking or new check-in options.
We've also added a section for the recommended content,
helping to improve your Power BI mobile experience and
productivity by exploring content from
your organization selected, especially for you.
You can find it in a new section on
the homepage and on the new explore page.
Last but not least,
you can now request access
to reports from the mobile app.
Now, if someone sends you a link to
a report that you don't yet have permissions to read,
you can request access directly from the app.
In the developer's section,
we're announcing that Power BI visual offers is
being moved to Commercial Marketplace
within the Partner Center.
If you have one or more Power BI visual offers,
either published or as a draft,
please take note of this move.
For more details and action items,
please check out the announcement
in this month's release blog post.
Next in the visualization section,
we have some exciting new and updated visuals
available for you on AppSource.
New this month are the SPC G chart by Cloud2 Limited UK,
the SPC U 'Prime' chart by Cloud2 Limited UK,
the Laconic Card PRO visual by Laconic Charts,
and the Timeline Box visual by TheraTraq.
Updated this month are:
the PAFnow Process Mining flowchart
visual by Process Analytics Factory, GmbH,
the Drill Down Network PRO visual by ZoomCharts,
the Annotated Bar Chart by Queryon,
the Graphomate pictograms visual by Graphomate.
This month's editor's picks are:
the Sunburst visual by MAQ Software,
the Collaborative visual by ValQ,
the process.science Process Mining
visual by Process.science GmbH,
the Lipstick Bar Chart by Nova Silva BV,
and the TRUECHART for Power BI
visual by HighCoordination GmbH.
You can find these editor's picks and
all of the other mentioned visuals on AppSource.
Lastly, we're excited to announce
a new version of Power BI report builder.
With this update of report builder,
the 64-bit version is now available from
the Microsoft Download Center and the Microsoft Store,
featuring enhanced memory limits
and other performance gains.
We also provide enhanced support
for date, time parameters,
and a number of accessibility fixes related
to keyboard shortcuts and screen reading tools.
Please note that the previously
installed third-party data providers
may need to be updated to their 64-bit versions.
Last but not least, we invite you to join
us at community.powerbi.com for
the latest in upcoming Power BI events and opportunities
for you to engage
with our awesome Power BI community members.
That's all for this month.
As always, we hope you enjoy the updates and please,
keep sending us feedback on
what you'd like to see in upcoming releases.
Thanks for watching, and we'll
see you again in the community,
and see you again here next month.