By Luke Sisley, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, CSL
Power BI Update
This month we focus in on three of the new updates from Microsoft – expanded availability of error bars, expanded Tooltip functionality and Mobile enhancements and Goals push notifications. As with previous updates, some of the new features are in preview, meaning that you will need to ensure you’ve selected ‘Preview Features’ in the Options & Settings menu pane.
Here are the highlights
Reporting
Expanded availability of error bars
Following on from last month’s addition of error bars, this month sees their expanded availability, further increasing the potential for statistical analysis in native Power BI charts. Error bars can now be used in clustered bar and column charts by simply dragging upper and lower bound fields into the error bars card. The illustration opposite shows this in a clustered bar and column chart.
Expanded error bars in a clustered bar and column chart.
This development will be useful when working with Power BI’s forecasting functionality, allowing users to easily display confidence intervals. Forecasts are only as good as your inputs, so if your pharma organisation is dependent on accurate forecasting, I would recommend taking a look at our free white paper on NHS datasets that you might not be using.
Expanded Tooltip functionality
Tooltips drill functionality is a quick and easy way to change the scope of visuals in Power BI. With the latest update, Tooltips now support drill actions for matrix, line, area and stacked area charts, giving users more opportunity to investigate and interact with data in Power BI.
Clients using tables who want to drill through, now have the option to do this much more easily by having the Tooltip instead of having to right click in a very specific location, making this much more accessible for users!
Mobile
Mobile enhancements and Goals push notifications
Two important updates impact mobile usability this month. Firstly, Microsoft have extended visual interaction support to new mobile formatting. On top of that, we now have two new push notification types for Power BI goals. Assignments and mentions now trigger notifications, enabling your team members to be responsive and connected.
For both kinds of notification, tapping the notification takes you right to the goal’s details pane inside the scorecard, where you can see all the necessary information.
For organisations looking to capitalise on mobile developments to build agile and responsive workforces, data freshness is crucial. In a previous news release, our BI Developer Scott Bryson discusses our ability to provide “near real-time” updates in Power BI. Such solutions are crucial in keeping you one step ahead.
Data Preparation
Data Connectivity
This month’s new and updated connectors listed below
Service
- Power BI Goals updates
Visualisations
To Wrap It Up
That wraps up our summary on three of the interesting new features delivered with this update. You can find the full summary here.
For support in getting the most out of Power BI, please call us on 01483 528302 or email info@csl-uk.com, or read more about how our Power BI experts can support you here.
