By Scott Bryson, BI Developer, CSL
Power BI Update
Overview
Microsoft has recently released their March 2021 round of updates in-line with their monthly release schedule. Below I have pulled some of the more interesting points from this release.
Just remember to enable any preview features in Power BI desktop settings.
Lots of the updates this month are preview only features so you won’t see them unless you have done this step.
Something before we begin:
Windows 7 Deprecation
If you’re a Windows 7 user, it’s important to note that Power BI Desktop stopped supporting Windows 7 on January 31st 2021. Power BI Desktop is now only supported on Windows 8.1 or newer versions of Windows, and as always for only the newest release of Power BI Desktop.
Here are the highlights
Reporting
Advanced Data Selection in Azure Maps Visual
The Azure maps visual is still relatively new to Power BI so I expect to see many more new features as the visual ramps up. This month Microsoft have added some new selection controls. There are 4 ways to interact now:
Range Selection
This one will be useful for trying to see distance from a point. Maybe you are a delivery company and want to see how far you could deliver in a time period?
Radial selection
Useful for selecting all points from a central point – again useful for calculating an area which could / needs to be covered!
Box selection
Similar to the radial selection but useful when you want to highlight a specific area on the map to drill into.
Polygon selection
This is useful if you want to be very specific from a mapping perspective, maybe you are close to the coast and you need to calculate time more accurately.
Analytics
X axis constant line for line charts
This one has been something that has been possible via a complicated workaround for a while but now is available out of the box. Adding a constant line or point of interest is now available.
Data connectivity
Updated certified connectors
There are updates being released to the following nine certified connectors:
- Exasol
- Automation Anywhere
- Zoho Creator
- e-Way CRM
- IntelligentPlant
- Data Virtuality
- Vena
- FactSet
- MariaDB
Visualizations
New Visualizations
New this month are:
As is usually the case with the added visuals, these are from third party companies and may come with an additional charge for usage.
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-march-2021-feature-summary/
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