What's new and planned for Power BI in Microsoft Fabric
Important
The release plans describe functionality that may or may not have been released yet. The delivery timelines and projected functionality may change or may not ship. Refer to Microsoft policy for more information.
Microsoft business intelligence (BI) helps drive a data culture where everyone, at every level of an organization, can make confident decisions with data at any scale. To enable organizations to drive a data culture, we continue to invest across three key themes that we've introduced before: Power BI makes it easier than ever for every individual, every team, and every organization to work with data.
Empower every individual, Power BI provides familiar Office-like experiences and infuses artificial intelligence (AI) to increase user productivity. With the introduction of Power BI Copilot, we’re transforming how users interact and work with data by automating steps in the report creation workflow.
Empower every team, Power BI is integrated deeply with Office. It brings insights to Teams and Outlook, where everyone collaborates with deep integration in key experiences, such as meetings, channels, and chats.
Empower every organization, Power BI provides scale to meet the most demanding needs of large enterprises. With centralized administration, governance, and industry-leading security capabilities in Power BI, IT always has full visibility and control.
Investment areas
Combine existing mapping visuals into one with Azure Maps
Estimated release timeline: Q1 2024
Customers will get the best features of all mapping visuals rolled into a single visual. The new mapping visual supports the use of shapes, points, shading, and adding more data points than the current default map visual.
Control visual formatting with improved capabilities
Estimated release timeline: Q1 2024
Power BI will add new formatting capabilities that will provide users with more control over the appearance of their visuals. New format options will allow setting the padding and margins of visuals, and their default values will apply good design practices that will result in appealing visuals.
Enhancing image capture in Power BI add-in for PowerPoint
Estimated release timeline: Q1 2024
Previously, when users add Power BI report or visual to a PowerPoint presentation using the Power BI add-in, Power BI checks the user permissions before presenting any live data to those who view the presentation. But if the add-in was set as image, and when PowerPoint uses screen capture as a thumbnail, there is no check on who the user is. In this update we will allow users to tell PowerPoint whether to show the image to every user who has access to the presentation or to limit that only to those who have access to the report in Power BI. In addition, the default thumbnail will be disabled.
Create and run DAX queries with Query view in Power BI Desktop
Estimated release timeline: Q2 2024
Release Type: General availability
The DAX query view allows BI developers to create and run DAX queries in Power BI! Use the existing DAX query syntax to quickly query your data model.
DAX expressions are used to define any measure, calculated column, calculated table, dynamic format string, calculation item, and row level security on your model. But that is not all you can do with DAX. With the DAX EVALUATE keyword, you can also use DAX to create a DAX query. This is much like a SQL query where you can specify columns and aggregations to return in a result table. You can learn more about DAX queries at DAX queries.
This powerful way to interact with your data model will be available in the new DAX query view! We give you several ways to help you be as productive as possible with these DAX queries:
- Quick queries in the context menu of the Data pane tables, columns, or measures gives you a head start by creating a DAX query to preview data or show summary statistics to help you understand the data without creating visuals and for DirectQuery you no longer must go back to Power Query to see some sample data.
- Right-click in the Data pane to get the DAX expression of all measures or a specific measure in a DEFINE statement with an EVALUATE statement to run as a DAX query and add any additional columns.
- If you modify that DEFINE measure from the model definition, a time saving option to update model can overwrite the current model definition with your changes – you don’t have to copy paste it back manually.
- If you use DEFINE to create a measure not in the model already, a time saving option to add to model can be used to add this measure to your model! Again, saving you the step of going new measure and then copy pasting the DAX expression over.
- If your measure references another measure, you can define the measure and all the references, meaning all the measures DAX expressions are visible on one screen! Now you can see the full context of how this measure is calculated from the source columns.
- Performance Analyzer already lets you copy the visual DAX query. Now you no longer need to take that DAX query and use another tool to view and run it – simply run the visual DAX query in Power BI.
Author calculation groups in Power BI Desktop
Estimated release timeline: Q2 2024
Release Type: General availability
Calculation groups provide a simple way to reduce the number of measures in a model by grouping common measure expressions. Calculation groups work with existing explicit DAX measures by automating repetitive patterns. For example, a sales analyst might want to view sales and order quantities by month-to-date (MTD), quarter-to-date (QTD), year-to-date (YTD), orders year-to-date for the previous year (PY), and so on. With this enhancement, data modelers will be able to create calculation groups by using Power BI Desktop.
Model explorer provides easy navigation to author objects
Estimated release timeline: Q2 2024
Release Type: General availability
The model explorer provides a convenient tree view of all the semantic model objects in the Data pane. The semantic model is all the metadata about your data, and it impacts how your data shows in reports and DAX queries. Model explorer shows all the semantic model items at-a-glance. Find items fast with the search. Focus on what you want to do by expanding and collapsing different item sections. Know how many of each item you have with counts on each section.
- Semantic model: Clicking on the top semantic model node shows a properties pane with semantic model settings such as discourage implicit measures.
- Calculation groups: Full authoring capability for calculation groups and calculation items. Including the only way to view and edit the calculation items.
- Cultures: Visibility only into the cultures of this semantic model.
- Measures: Visibility and authoring capabilities of all the measures in this semantic model, even when they are residing in different tables and folders.
- Perspectives: Visibility only into the perspectives of this semantic model.
- Relationships: Visibility and authoring capabilities for relationships. Including creating a new relationship with the properties pane.
- Roles: Visibility and authoring of row-level security in this semantic model.
- Tables: All the tables with sub-sections for columns, measures, hierarchies, and partitions.
Copilot GA
Estimated release timeline: Q2 2024
Release Type: General availability
Copilot in Fabric for Power BI is now Generally available. This capability allows report authors to quickly and easily create brand new reports using the natural language to express intent. Copilot will take the intent and will quickly convert it to a brand new report page consisting of visuals, measures and filters automatically layed out by Copilot.
Copilot answer questions
Estimated release timeline: Q2 2024
Release Type: Public preview
This feature allows users to ask questions against their data model using Copilot even if the answer is not currently within the report
Dynamic per recipient subscriptions
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: General availability
With dynamic per recipient subscriptions, you can set up a single email subscription that delivers a different copy of a report to each recipient. Using data in a Power BI dataset, you can dynamically specify who should receive the subscription and with what data. For example, consider a multi-geo sales report. You can now send this report to all salespeople, with each receiving an email with an exported copy of the report with only sales data from their region. Support for dynamic subscriptions will be extended from only paginated reports to also include Power BI reports.
Dark mode support in Power BI Desktop
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: Public preview
This feature allows users to toggle dark mode insiode Power BI Desktop
Deliver subscriptions to a OneDrive and SharePoint location
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: General availability
With the ability to deliver Power BI and paginated report subscriptions to a OneDrive or SharePoint location, users can now view reports that are too large to be delivered to their inboxes. Accessing these reports from OneDrive or SharePoint locations makes finding reports easy too. Users can also keep all the historical reports that they need.
Copilot for measure descriptions
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: General availability
Use Fabric Copilot for Power BI to create descriptions for your semantic model measures. The description property is important documentation for your measures, as only the measure name and description are available to those who are making reports from your semantic model. Fabric Copilot can make your semantic model documentation easier by generating measure descriptions for you. This is when you create the measure and when you update the DAX formula of a measure, at each stage Copilot can quickly generate or update the measure description, helping you maintain your documentation and maintaining your workflow.
Copilot for DAX query generation
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: General availability
DAX query authors can use Copilot for DAX query generation to write, edit, or explain DAX queries on their model data. Ask what data you want to see returned and Copilot will give you the DAX query. Copilot can also be used to add a column or formatting to an existing DAX query, even finding the column in your data. Finally, Copilot can explain what a DAX query is doing or tell you more about specific DAX functions. This is a huge productivity boost in authoring DAX queries.
Organizational Apps for Fabric
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: Public preview
Power BI apps are one of the easiest ways to package up and securely distribute Power BI reporting to your organization in a customized and easy-to-use experience. Previously one Power BI app could be created per workspace. With apps rebuilt for Fabric, multiple organizational apps can be created per workspace. Apps can contain more than just Power BI items like reports, but Fabric items like notebooks too. And the app experience can be customized in new ways with more control over the color (choose any color), navigation style, and landing experience.
Live edit of Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI Desktop
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: Public preview
Previously, you could only create and edit semantic models using the incredible query performance of Direct Lake for your lakehouse based reports from the Power BI service. With live edit of Direct Lake semantic models in Power BI Desktop, you can also edit these semantic models in Power BI Desktop. Access the full power of semantic modeling capabilities and Git integration provided by Power BI Desktop for Direct Lake models! You can live edit semantic models by selecting the semantic model in OneLake Data Hub and simply click “Edit”.
Metrics Hub
Estimated release timeline: Q3 2024
Release Type: Public preview
The Metrics Hub will enable users to promote consistent, reliable metrics in large organizations. This will help end users become more independent in the discovery and consumption of standardized metrics that are surfaced from corporate semantic models. Report creators will no longer have to rely on and understand complex models with dozens of tables, or independently create and maintain new versions of the same measure that already exist. Additionally, this metrics layer will unlock previously siloed data. Because you can use metrics across Fabric, users can leverage key metrics in data solutions like Python notebooks. The Metrics Layer will help business users find what they are looking for quickly and easily without a dependency on IT, and make reliable, data-driven business decisions. It will add confidence in metrics by making visible business definitions and where the data is coming from, showing they are derived from trusted sources and allow for analysis of different dimensions of a given metric.
Visual improvements
Estimated release timeline: Q4 2024
Release Type: Public preview
We are continiously making a ton of improvement in the core visuls space and in this upcomming update we will be working on several of your top items including new list and dropdown slicer support, cartesian primary axis and thhe GA of modern tooltips
Visual calculations UI Updates
Estimated release timeline: Q4 2024
Release Type: Public preview
In this update, it will now be possible to interact with visual claulcations using a point and click UI similar to that of Excel. we are also extending the precanned templates for doing some of the most popular calculatiuonsand improving the support for all visuals when using visual calculatins
Customize content access request messages for Power BI organizational apps
Estimated release timeline: Q4 2024
Release Type: General availability
This feature will allow setting a custom entry point for each Power BI organizational app to an organization's internal access management system from Power BI Access Request messages. This feature will be especially useful for organizations that rely on security groups to control access to content.
Shipped feature(s)
Balance user queries with query scale-out GA
Shipped (Q4 2023)
Release Type: General availability
Query scale-out is a Power BI Premium feature that load balances user queries across multiple dataset read replicas in a pool of Power BI Premium nodes. Essentially, it speeds up query response times for high user-concurrency workloads. Additionally, dataset refresh operations benefit from increased isolation from the read replicas that protect user queries and improve performance. The management of query scale-out in Power BI is highly automated compared to other platforms, such as Azure Analysis Services. Also, adding and removing read replicas is performed dynamically based on live usage.
Create reports in the Power BI service with new data sources
Shipped (Q1 2024)
It will be possible to create new reports in the Power BI service by using over 100 connectors and 300 transformations, supported by the full capability of Power Query Online.
Automatic mobile report layout in Power BI Desktop
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Power BI Desktop already supports creating an alternative report layout that’s optimized for mobile devices. However, the mobile layout is a blank canvas, which requires the report creator to add, size, and format visuals.
To increase productivity, a new experience will automatically generate the mobile layout by selecting a button. Report creators can accept this layout as the final design, or they can use it as their starting point.
Visual calculations
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Release Type: Public preview
A visual calculation is a DAX calculation that's defined and executed directly on a visual. Visual calculations make it easier to create calculations that were previously hard to create, leading to simpler DAX, easier maintenance, and better performance. See Using visual calculations.
Author calculation groups
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Calculation groups are a simple way to reduce the number of measures in a model by grouping common measure expressions. Calculation groups work with existing explicit DAX measures by automating repetitive patterns. For example, a sales analyst might want to view sales and order quantities by month-to-date (MTD), quarter-to-date (QTD), year-to-date (YTD), orders year-to-date for the previous year (PY), and so on. Calculation groups are supported by Power BI models, however they’re an engine-only feature. With this enhancement, data modelers will be able to create calculation groups by using Power BI Desktop.
Create and run DAX queries with Query view in Power BI Desktop
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Release Type: Public preview
Professional BI developers can write and run DAX queries natively within Power BI. Previously, as DAX queries is an existing feature, a BI developer would have needed to use third party external tools or use an API in order to write and run DAX queries. Now, they can write and run DAX queries natively in Power BI in context and with additional tools to quickly get started and productively use DAX queries.
Periodic refresh in Power BI Storytelling add-in to support Slideshow
Shipped (Q1 2024)
A Microsoft PowerPoint presentation can be configured to run in a continuous loop. This can be useful for general data displays, kiosks, or any other informational display that will run with or without interaction.
We are adding a setting to Power BI add-in that will tell the add-in to automatically refresh the data in the slide every configured interval, so when the presentation is set for a continuous loop, the data keeps updating showing the most recent insights.
Dynamic per recipient subscriptions
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Release Type: Public preview
With dynamic per recipient subscriptions, you can set up a single email subscription that delivers a different copy of a report to each recipient. Using data in a Power BI dataset, you can dynamically specify who should receive the subscription and with what data. For example, consider a multi-geo sales report. You can now send this report to all salespeople, with each receiving an email with an exported copy of the report with only sales data from their region. Support for dynamic subscriptions will be extended from only paginated reports to also include Power BI reports.
Copilot in Power BI
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Release Type: Public preview
Copilot in Power BI brings advanced generative AI to experiences across Power BI report creation and consumption experiences. Copilot assists users to create new report pages by providing suggestions on how to analyze their data. It can also automatically create, format, and lay out visuals based on their natural language requests. Further, users can chat with Copilot in order to update and refine their report designs and to learn about the data presented in visuals. And most importantly, with Copilot the user is always in control. They decide what to keep, modify, or discard, and their data always remains their data.
Narrative with Copilot in Power BI
Shipped (Q1 2024)
Report creators in Power BI can use the new Narrative with Copilot visual to add generative AI summaries of their data within reports. Copilot provides suggested prompts that are used to summarize and find insights in data. Optionally, report creators can customize these prompts to fine tune the language, scope, and formatting of generated summaries. All insights generated by Copilot include citations that describe the sourced report data. Copilot summaries automatically regenerate when filters change, and they enforce any Power BI data security (like row-level security).
Copilot for DAX query generation
Shipped (Q1 2024)
DAX query authors can use Copilot for DAX query generation to write, edit, or explain DAX queries on their model data. Ask what data you want to see returned and Copilot will give you the DAX query. Copilot can also be used to add a column or formatting to an existing DAX query, even finding the column in your data. Finally, Copilot can explain what a DAX query is doing or tell you more about specific DAX functions. This is a huge productivity boost in authoring DAX queries.
Stored credentials for Direct Lake dataset security in Microsoft Fabric
Shipped (Q1 2024)
By default, Direct Lake storage mode accesses data in a Microsoft Fabric lakehouse or warehouse by using single sign-on (SSO). With SSO, the credentials of the user interacting with the Power BI report (or XMLA client tool) must have permission to query the underlying lakehouse or warehouse. However, it’s possible to use stored credentials, in which case the dataset owner can disable SSO. That means end users don’t require permission to query the underlying lakehouse or warehouse, and data security can be set up in the Power BI dataset. Direct Lake datasets can implement dataset data security, like row-level security (RLS) and object-level security (OLS).
Manage access to hidden content and link to content in Power BI organizational apps
Shipped (Q1 2024)
A new setting will allow organizational app creators to propagate access to an app’s hidden content to app users. In addition to improved control over access propagation, app creators will be able to copy links to content in apps from the app edit experience. The hidden content setting and ability to grab links to content give app creators control over the app navigation experience they have been asking for.
Connect to new datasources and create paginated reports on PBI Report Builder
Shipped (Q1 2024)
You can create print-ready paginated reports from PBI Report Builder from datasources such as Snowflake and Databricks without requiring ODBC. You can then publish and share these reports on Power BI service.