>> Hello and welcome to the Power BI February 2021 update.
In this video, we'll explore what's new
this month and see some demos of the highlights.
Let's start with the reporting section.
First, we're excited to announce
some new updates to the DirectQuery
for PowerBI datasets and Azure Analysis Services preview feature.
Based on your feedback,
we've added the ability to delete DirectQuery connections
to PowerBI datasets and Azure Analysis Services.
To do so, simply go to the transform data drop down in the ribbon,
select Data source settings,
right-click on the DirectQuery connection
you'd like to delete and select "Delete."
Please note, this does not reverse
the action of adding a local data model.
It deletes the DirectQuery connection and
the tables and fields associated with that connection.
In this release, we've also added support for calculated tables.
Thank you to everyone who's tried the feature so far and
provided feedback and it's not too late to jump in,
please try the feature and keep the feedback coming.
Next, we've added a search bar to the Power BI Desktop ribbon.
We've heard some feedback that it can sometimes
be difficult to find the commands, files,
or options you're looking for,
so the search bar will make accessing
what you need much more convenient.
This search bar includes
suggested actions based on the current state of your report,
which will update as you type.
Tessa will show us a demo of this feature.
>> This month we have a new update to our ribbon.
We've heard from you guys that sometimes it
can be difficult to find the particular
features that you're looking for in the ribbon
and this month we've added in a search bar to the top.
If you click in the search bar,
you'll see some suggested actions
that might direct you to actions that you'll
want to take and if you see this little arrow here,
if I click on it, it'll even fly out and show
me the additional options and in this case,
I'm looking at the themes options.
I can start searching in my search box to look for
a particular item that I might want to do something with.
In this case, I haven't even fully typed the word measure,
but it gives me the options for new measure,
quick measure, or you can pull out recent files that I
have that might have the part of that search term I'm looking for.
If you're looking for a particular item,
you can also go to, once you search it out,
you can also click on this "Help" button,
and this help button will actually take you out
to Microsoft documentation directly.
Something else to know is that if I click on a particular field,
if I just select it,
and then I go to my search bar,
you'd see that the actions
here for format and things like data-type,
if it's available, I can change them
directly in line within the search bar.
>> We're also bringing you more updates to
the preview of the new model view.
Based on your feedback,
we've added some personalization to the UI,
added new view controls,
and made some performance improvements to the feature.
Tessa will walk us through a demo.
>> This month we have a couple new updates to the model view UI.
The first one of which you may have already noticed.
If I zoom in a little bit,
you can see that the UI of these relationships has changed.
Previously, the cardinality was shown
at the endpoints of the relationship,
but now it's been consolidated into
the center to make it easier for you to read and
you can see the direction of
the relationship still is in the center of the relationship.
For example, if you look at this relationship here,
it has two arrows on each end of it,
so that means it is a bidirectional relationship.
The second update that I want to point out is that we have
updated or added in
a new feature for the colors that are shown on the table headers.
In this case, I have two different source groups that I've
pulled in data from and if
I go back to my report view and I go to the themes,
the colors of those headers will change according
to whatever report theme that I've selected.
I'm just going to go ahead and select
City Park and then I'll switch back over to
my model view and you can see that the colors and
the headers have updated to reflect the theme that I've used.
>> Next, we're expanding the preview of
the new field list from the Model View to include all views,
that is the Model, Report and Data views.
This month's update will create consistency for
functionality and UI across views.
Check out our November 2020 update
to get a feel for all of the changes and
try out the new Field List by turning it on in
the preview features section of the options menu.
Continuing our work on the Small Multiples preview feature,
we've added grid line and background color controls
to the grid layout formatting guard.
These controls provide you with new options to
clearly separate your Small Multiples plot areas.
Now you can set background color and transparency,
add an assortment of different grid line patterns and style
those grid lines as you see fit.
We thank you for your feedback so far,
please continue sending us your thoughts on
this feature as we continue working on the preview.
We've also updated the color picker to make it easier to work with.
The colors swatches are more separated,
making it easier to find the color you need.
In the more colors screen,
you can now enter an RGB value in addition to a hex value.
Jeroen will show us a demo.
>> In this release,
we've updated the color picker.
It's a tiny but very important part of our product,
so I'm happy to show you the before and after comparison.
On the left here you'll see the old color picker and on the right,
the updated version and one thing that's immediately
clear is the size of
the color swatches and the space between them,
making it easier to find the color you're looking
for and one thing I really love about
the new color picker is in the custom color or
more colors screen and in the updated version,
as before, you can still enter a hex value for your color,
but you can now also enter RGB values here,
to define the color you're looking for and to top it off,
we've redesigned how you pick
your color to give you much more control of
the exact shade of color you want without having to
resort to finding those hex values and as I said,
it's a very small improvement,
but I'm sure you'll love it.
>> Next, we've added smart guides to the mobile layout view,
helping you to align objects on your mobile report page.
Now anytime you drag or resize objects,
you'll see smart guides and your objects will
step into position when aligned with other objects.
In the filter pane, we've added two new filter operations,
"is empty" and "is not empty".
You can find these new operations in
the advanced filtering filter type.
The operation "is empty",
shows items when the value is
an empty string and the operation "is not empty",
shows items when the value is not an empty string.
Keep in mind that if you have text values with only spaces,
these values are automatically converted to empty strings.
Also keep in mind that
these operations are for empty string values.
For null values use the "is
blank" and "is not blank" operations instead.
We are also bringing you more granular control over
certificate revocation checks for web connections.
Since we introduced this feature in November 2020,
we've heard your feedback that you need
more fine-grained control of the certificate revocation check.
Now, the basic check will accept
certificates whose revocation status is unknown,
such as in the case where it's not specified in the certificate.
This is important for
some organizations that use corporate proxy servers.
Next to that, you can still disable
the revocation check or enable it in comprehensive mode,
which will not accept certificates with unknown revocation status.
In the Analysis section,
we're happy to announce that
the Anomaly Detection preview feature
can now be accessed in the ribbon.
You can find it under the AI section of the data/drill tab.
We've also decreased the minimum number of
data points required for the analysis to four.
We greatly appreciate any feedback
in terms of what you like about
the feature and how we can improve
it so keep sending us your thoughts.
In the Modeling section,
enhanced dataset metadata is now generally available.
In the past, only loadable queries
generated in Power Query were stored in the data model.
But now all queries will be part of the data model definition.
This addition has already made useful new capabilities possible,
like using external tools to have tables
appear as queries upon report opening,
or allow you to unzip a PBIT file and see the model in JSON,
and it will continue to unlock more functionality in the future.
In the Data Connectivity section,
we're excited to bring you new and updated connectors.
First, is the new Teams Analytics Connector.
This connector for Microsoft Teams enables you to view
your personal Teams usage data to
understand and improve how you're using Microsoft Teams.
It shows you key usage metrics
like the number of Teams meetings you've participated in,
how many minutes you've spent sharing your screen, audio,
and video, and view activity metrics for Teams you're a member of.
This is the same data available from
within the analytics view in Teams
and personal view of your Microsoft Teams user activity.
Next, we've added custom roles
support for the Snowflake Connector.
Role selection provides
query level granularity as the role becomes
part of the source step in each of the generated M queries,
providing more flexibility to users.
When setting up the Snowflake connector,
you can find a new option under Advanced Options,
allowing you to specify a text value to use as a role name.
Next, the Parquet Files Connector
is now available on Power BI Desktop.
Where previously it was only available in dataflows,
now you can find it in the Get Data dialog.
Keep in mind that this connector is only available
in 64-bit installations of Power BI Desktop.
For the Hive LLAP connector,
we've updated functionality to support Windows Authentication.
We've also updated the Salesforce Connector to use
the v48 API by default to
ensure up-to-date compatibility with Salesforce APIs.
Salesforce API versions generally deprecate after three years,
sometimes resulting in removed objects or properties.
If this upgrade results in such behavior,
you can manually set the API version through the advanced editors,
then update your queries to be compatible with v48.
We've also released new connector articles for
SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse documentation.
You can find links to these in the video description below.
Next, we're excited to share that you
can now create a subscription from a premium
upgraded workspace with PPU for yourself
and others and include a copy of all pages in your report.
This eliminates the need to subscribe separately to
each section and is effectively
generating an export of the report.
Attachments may be generated in either PDF or PPT format.
In the Mobile section,
you can now easily find
your organization's endorsed content in the mobile application.
Content that's been promoted or certified in
the service is now tagged in the app with a badge.
Report creators promote their content
to show that it's ready for you to use
or certify their content to show that it's
been approved by your organization.
Further, Power BI free license users can
now navigate to workspaces in the mobile apps.
Until now, free license users could only access
workspace content through the Shared with Me page.
With this release, Power BI free license users can view and access
workspaces for which they've been added as
viewers directly from the workspaces list.
In the Visualization section,
we have some useful new visuals available for you on AppSource.
New this month are:
the Graphomate matrix by Graphomate,
the ParaTaskCard visual by Paradigm BI,
the SMART KPI List by Nova Silva BV,
the Lipstick Column and Bar Charts by Nova Silva BV,
the Control Chart XmR by Nova Silva BV,
the ParaHTMLViewer by Paradigm BI,
the Merged Bar Chart by Nova Silva BV,
the Animated Image and Bubble Chart by Inovista Limited,
the Animated Bar Race Chart by Inovista Limited,
the Dynamic Radial Bar Chart by JTA,
and the Text Highlighter visual by Peaks & Pies GmbH.
Updated this month are: the Shielded HTML Viewer by Nova Silva,
version 4.5 of Zebra BI Tables,
version 4.5 of Zebra BI Charts,
ValQ 2.0 with connected and collaborative planning features,
and the Drill Down Combo PRO by ZoomCharts.
More information on all of the new and updated visuals can be
found on our blog and in
their respective links in the video description below.
Lastly, this month's editor's picks are:
the individuals and moving range control chart by PQ systems,
the Acterys variance visual by Managility,
the advanced Pie and Donut Chart by xViz,
and the Zebra BI Charts by Zebra BI.
You can find these editor's picks and all
of the other mentioned visuals on AppSource.
We have a new template app for you in the Template Apps section.
Template apps allow you to save time by connecting your own data
to a pre-built report that you can personalize and share.
But first, we're excited to announce that you can now
pre-configure your template app installation
when publishing your template app,
making life easy for you and your customers and
eliminating a frequently encountered source of frustration.
Before this release, when installing a template app,
users had to configure parameters
to connect the template app to their data.
This process was sometimes
confusing and led to failed installations.
Now onto this month's template app,
Sales Analytics AI for Microsoft Business Central.
With this template app,
you leverage your investment in Business Central,
extending your business process management with
analytical capabilities to improve your business performance.
This template app provides
detailed breakdowns of your sales and order book,
customer retention metrics, and more.
The only requirement is to download and install
the free Business Central extension as part of the solution.
If you're interested in trying out this template app,
please check out the links in the video description below.
In the Developers section,
we're fixing an interaction between some custom visuals and
visual containers where custom visuals
didn't fully support the customized series.
The fix is now available in Service and Desktop.
With a 3.6 API release,
we're also allowing Power BI visuals to receive
updates from Power BI without the need to bind any data.
To use this feature,
a visual needs to use the
3.6.0 version of the Power BI visuals API,
and have both "supportsLandingPage"
and "supportsEmptyDataView" set to true.
Of course, we have a few more updates for you this month.
First, across the Power Platform,
we've updated our product icons to the new Fluent design system.
You may have seen this new style rolling out across
Microsoft products including Office and Dynamics,
and we're bringing that modern full-color experience
here to Power BI as well.
We hope you like it.
Lastly, we'd like to send a heads-up to the Power BI tenants and
users still using Edge Legacy or Internet Explorer 11.
As we announced last year,
Microsoft products including Power BI,
will no longer support IE 11 as of August 17, 2021.
Microsoft Edge Legacy end of Life is on March 9th, 2021.
For more information on the end of life,
as well as resources for how to
transition to other browsers like the new Microsoft Edge,
check out the link in the video description below.
If you haven't already done so, remember,
join us at community.powerbI.com.
Your one-stop-shop for all things Power BI.
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 next month.