BIFocal Podcast - Clarifying Business Intelligence, Power BI, Office 365, and more

Episode 105 – June 2019 Power BI Desktop Update

This is episode 105 recorded on June 13th, 2019 where John & Jason talk about the latest update to Power BI Desktop including the new look for Power BI Desktop, Certified and shared datasets, and Visual level filters for slicers.

Show Notes

MBAS Session are Online – https://community.powerbi.com/t5/MBAS-Gallery/bd-p/MBAS_Gallery?filter=pc_power+bi

Power BI Desktop June 2019 Features

Reporting

Analytics

Modeling

New DAX comparison operator: ==

Visualization

Data connectivity

Data preparation

Improvements to M Intellisense

User Voice Picks

John

Move Measures Between Tables in New Modelling View

The new Modelling View was delivered in Nov 2018 and is fabulous. There is already a button to select all measures in a table – great. I would like to then move all the selected measures to another table, either by drag and drop or by selecting the home table in the properties list (just like you can do for formatting).

Jason

Dark Mode for Power BI

Having a dark mode especially on the creator UI when putting things together would be helpful, similar to other MSFT apps (Azure, Office 2016, etc).

Episode 104 – Power BI Keynote from MBAS

This is episode 104 recorded on June 10th, 2019 live from Microsoft’s Business Applications Summit where John & Jason talk about all of the announcements from the Power BI Vision & Roadmap keynote.

Scenes from the keynote

Microsoft has published the keynote to YouTube, so you can watch it here or read our synopsis below… or both.

Synopsis

Announcement posts

Announcing New AI and Enterprise features for Power BI

Power BI Desktop June 2019 Feature Summary

Announcing Paginated Reports in Power BI general availability

Announcing Power BI template apps general availability

Introducing Siri Integration with Power BI Mobile iOS App (preview)

Announcing AI Premium Workload, Cognitive Services and Azure ML general availability

Episode 103 – The Road to MBAS

This is episode 103 recorded on June 7th, 2019 where John & Jason talk about the Microsoft Community, plans for the Microsoft Business Applications Summit, a few bits of news, and some recent helpful blog posts from John.

Show Notes

Microsoft Business Applications Summit

Connect to Power BI dataflows and datasets using Power BI Desktop with multiple accounts

Connecting Power BI workspaces and SharePoint sites

User Voice Picks

John:

Make OneDrive a default Get Data connector

Please add a OneDrive data source option in Power BI.

It is incredibly frustrating that Power BI does not come with a OneDrive for Business option baked in and is especially strange since OneDrive belongs to Microsoft. It seems like this would have been present in the application from Day 1.

Having to manually locate a file outside of Power BI, identify the correct URL for the file in a OneDrive account, and then having to plug that in to Power BI is unnecessarily convoluted and is particularly difficult for new Power BI users to manage.

Jason:

Prompt the User Before Creating a Hierarchy When Fields are Dragged Onto Each Other

How many times have you dragged a field onto another field by mistake and have it create a hierarchy?

It happens quite often. Usually I am trying to drag the field to the Visualization pane but fail to hold the mouse button. And lo and behold it creates a hierarchy. (Which I then have to delete. But sometimes I do not even notice that I accidentally created a hierarchy).

It would be nice if a prompt came up, asking if we want to create a Hierarchy

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/36626470-prompt-the-user-before-creating-a-hierarchy-when-f

Episode 102 -Live from the European Collaboration Summit

Image may contain: Jason Himmelstein and John Patrick White, people smiling, closeup and indoor

This is episode 102 recorded at European Collaboration Summit in Wiesbaden, Germany on May 29th, 2019 where John & Jason talk about latest Power BI news.

Show Notes

Creating complex real-time dashboards with Power BI

Episode 101 – May 2019 Power BI Desktop Update

This is episode 101 recorded on May 23rd, 2019 where John & Jason talk about latest update to Power BI Desktop

Show Notes

Reporting

Analytics

Key influencers visual improvements (preview)

Automatic query cancellation for Power BI Desktop

Episode 100 – a measurable milestone

This is episode 100 recorded on May 16th, 2019 where John & Jason make a big deal about episode 100, talk about how they got here, some of the events that they have coming up, make some picks, and Jason pulls a fast one on John.

Jason’s picks

Allow workspace tagging

As an IT administrator responsible for PBI Service management and governance. I would like the ability to create free form tags (Similar to azure portal tags). to track key metadata like a GL Code or responsible business department or other business specific information. These tags should be exposed via the API so they can be used to pull back in reports. tagging assets in the workspace (Reports, dashboards datasets) would be useful as well

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37078417-allow-workspace-tagging

Notify me when credentials for scheduled refresh expire

Today, 10-15 of my scheduled refreshes for both datasets and dataflows failed because the credentials cached in the PowerBI service for SharePoint expired. It took only a few minutes to renew those credentials, but several hours to re-refresh the dataflows (they all hit the same source, and time out if fired at once. They are scheduled for staggered refresh). If I had been notified by email before the refreshes failed instead of after, I could have easily renewed the credentials in question.

Note that my user account/password did not change. The access token stored by PBI merely expired.

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37343548-notify-me-when-credentials-for-scheduled-refresh-e

John’s pick

Source Control

PowerBI.com should have some type of Source Code control integration for change control

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/9677517-source-control

Upcoming events

SharePoint Conference 2019

June 19-24, 2019
Las Vegas, NV
www.sharepointconference.com
Use discount code WHITE for $50 off

SharePoint Virtual Summit 2019

May 21, 2019 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
https://aka.ms/SPC/Keynote

European Collaboration Summit 2019

May 27-29, 2019
Wiesbaden, Germany
https://collabsummit.eu/

Microsoft Business Application Summit 2019

June 10-11, 2019
Georgia World Congress Center | Atlanta, GA
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/businessapplicationssummit

SharePointFest Seattle

August 19-23, 2019
Washington State Convention Center | Seattle, WA
https://sharepointfest.com/Seattle/

Episode 99 – Interview with Abram Jackson and Tyler Lenig from the Microsoft Graph Data Connect Team

This is episode 99 where John & Jason talk to Abram Jackson & Tyler Lenig, Program Managers from the Graph Data Connect Team, about the release of Microsoft Graph Data Connect & how it can be used with Power BI.

Show Notes

Microsoft Graph Data Connect Overview

Using Microsoft Graph Data Connect with PowerBI dataflows

We are now on Spotify!

BIFocal Facebook page hits 200 likes

Dataflows vs Data Flows

User Voice Picks

John – Time Zone Conversion Accounting for Daylight Savings Time

We need a way to display data in our local timezone accounting for daylight savings time. The data source stores the dates in UTC but we need reports to show local time. A native and easy way to do this in PowerBI would be a huge help. There are many blog posts and help articles floating around with solutions people have attempted but it’s a simple issue that so many users would benefit from having solved centrally by PowerBI itself. Please consider!

Jason – Paginated reports – please make it available in Pro as well as Premium

Paginated reports – please make it available in Pro as well as Premium .. thank you

Episode 98 – Live from SPFest DC 2019

This is episode 98 recorded on April 2nd, 2019 where John & Jason talk to Treb Gatte, Managing Partner at Tumble Road, about all the exciting Power BI news from the last couple of weeks.

Show Notes

E-Mail Subscriptions for Paginated Reports is Now Available

Announcing Query Caching in Power BI Premium

Skip Test Connection for On-premises and Cloud Data Sources

Announcing Power BI Home General Availability (GA) & Roadmap

Power BI Dataset data source support for Paginated Reports is now available

Exporting the workspaces list from the Admin Portal

Duplicating workspaces by using Power BI cmdlets

Episode 97 – Interview with Matthew Roche

This is episode 97 recorded on March 21st, 2019 where John & Jason talk to the SQL All Father himself, Matthew Roche, Senior Program Manager on the Power BI CAT team, about Dataflows, sword play, and much more.

Show Notes

Matthew’s blog – BI Polar

Matthew on Twitter – SQLAllFather

Power BI Dataflows Go Live

Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts

Deadliest Art: A documentary on Historical European Martial Arts

User Voice Picks

John – Allow fonts to be customized

Jason – One single schedule task for sequential refresh of both Dataflows + Dataset

Episode 96 – April 2019 Power BI Desktop Update

This is episode 96 recorded on April 15th, 2019 where John & Jason talk about latest update to Power BI Desktop the including features like Drillthrough across reports, Filter pane improvements, & Dataflows connector now being generally available, plus a breakdown of some other news AND User Voice Picks!

News

Privacy Levels for Cloud Data Sources

Paginated Reports now supported in Apps in Power BI

Governance settings for Power BI cache refreshes from Azure Analysis Services

Desktop Drop

Reporting

Analytics

Modeling

New DAX function – ALLCROSSFILTERED

Visualizations

rainbowGauge

Data connectivity

Data preparation

Other

Power BI Paginated Report Builder

User Voice Picks

John

Power BI Desktop should use the currently logged in account credentials for dataflow connections

When connecting to a dataflow in Power BI Desktop, the connection is cached like all other connections. Each connection persists the relevant tokens for their sources. However, when persisting a SQL connection, each database is cached separately, so different credentials can be used with different databases.

However, dataflows will only store the last connection to a dataflow, which makes connecting to dataflows in multiple tenants an arduous process of changing the data connect options.

Also confusing is the fact that the account switcher control is unrelated to the dataflow credentials, leading to situations where publish shows one set of workspaces, but the dataflow connector shows another.

Having the account switcher credentials tied to the dataflow connection credentials would solve both of these problems.

Jason

Display the Desktop version

It would be very useful to see what version of the Desktop is being run shown on the splash screen and somewhere in the client, not just under the About tab. With the ability to run side-by-side versions of Power BI Desktop to support work with the Service & PBIRS it is important to know which version of Power BI Desktop you are working in.