Power BI – What new features has Microsoft given us in July 2020

By Scott Bryson, BI Developer, CSL

Power BI Update

Here are the highlights

Microsoft has recently released their July 2020 round of updates. Just remember to enable any preview features in Power BI desktop settings! 

Visualizations

Gradient legend

You can now include a legend for data colours that have been conditionally formatted by colour scale. This legend can help clarify the meaning of the colours in a visual to report viewers.

You can find the conditional formatting dialog in the Data Colours Card of the formatting pane.

Use this dialog to set a new rule to format your data along a colour scale:

 

 

Keep in mind that you cannot both conditionally format your data colours and split your data using the Legend field well. This is because the Legend field well already colours your data by category.

The gradient legend feature is enabled for the following charts
•    Stacked bar chart
•    Stacked column chart
•    Clustered bar chart
•    Clustered column chart
•    100% stacked bar chart
•    100% stacked column chart
•    Scatter chart

Azure Maps visual (preview)

The Azure Maps visual for Power BI is now available for Public preview and includes the following visualization layers:

•    Bubble layer
•    3D bar chart layer
•    Reference layer
•    Custom tile layer
•    Real-time traffic overlay

This is a hugely exciting new potential visual and there is much more detail in the link at the bottom of the page.

Bubble layer

Bubble layers are a great way to represent location data as scaled circles on the map.

3D Bar Chart Layer

3D bar charts are useful for taking data to the next dimension by allowing visualization of location data as 3D bars or cylinders on the map.

Reference Layer

With this feature a GeoJSON file containing custom location data can be uploaded and overlaid on the map. Properties in the GeoJSON file can be used to customize the style of the shapes. 

Custom Tile Layer

Overlay a custom tile layer on the map to add an additional layer of context. Tile layers allow you to super-impose images on top of Azure Maps base map tiles.

Overlay weather data from the Azure Maps weather services or bring your own tile service. The following map displays a bubble layer of sales data of store selling sunglasses above a tile layer showing current weather radar from Azure Maps. In this case, we can easily see that fewer sales of sunglasses are occurring where it is rain.

Real-time traffic overlay

Overlay real-time traffic flow data to see how traffic congestion relates to your data.

For example, the following map is showing the position of field technicians rendered as a bubble layer on the map colored by their experience level and scaled by the amount of remaining time on their current job.

Modeling

Support for Excel financial functions

Microsoft have added 49 financial functions to DAX.

•    FV
•    PMT 
•    PV 
•    RATE
•    PPMT
•    IPMT
•    NPER
•    YIELD
•    CUMIPMT
•    RRI
•    DB
•    EFFECT

•    MDURATION 
•    DDB
•    PRICE
•    CUMPRINC
•    DURATION
•    ISPMT
•    ACCRINT
•    INTRATE
•    SYD
•    COUPDAYS
•    TBILLPRICE
•    YIELDDISC
•    ACCRITM
•    COUPNCD
•    DISC
•    DOLLARDE
•    PDURATION
•    AMORDEGRC
•    COUPPCD
•    PRICEDISC

•    TBILLEQ
•    VDB
•    AMORLINC
•    COUPBAYBS
•    COUPDAYSNC
•    COUPNUM
•    DOLLARFR
•    ODDFPRICE
•    ODDFYIELD
•    ODDLPRICE
•    ODDLYIELD
•    PRICEMAT
•    RECEIVED
•    TBILLYIELD
•    YIELDMAT

Here’s the full list of financial functions

To Wrap It Up

For a full list, including any feature I did not touch on, here’s the official announcement:

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-july-2020-feature-summary/

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.

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