Episode 108 – Interview with Justyna Lucznik

This is episode 108 recorded on July 12th, 2019 where John & Jason interview Justyna Lucznik, Program Manager on the Microsoft Power BI team, about the Machine Learning abilities in Power BI, the announcements around AI & ML at MBAS and what is still to come.

User Voice Picks

Justyna

Ability to execute R and/or Python scripts on data model data in DAX expressions

Expose a generic function in DAX that takes R/Python script as a parameter to run on data model data. This enables real advanced analytics in Power BI.

Jason

Add labels to Key Influencers

1. Add data labels to Key Influencers so we can see which data points are the outliers.

Currently, the only way to know is to filter categories out, or to do a scatter plot of the 2 variables under consideration. Not practical when having many key influencers.

2. Add color and size options for the graphical view of the influencers, similar to the Scatter Plot visual

-OR-

3. Add the ML capability to show clusters in the data, in addition with the awesome decision tree for the top segments.

John

Machine Learning Models for Pro Users

Please extend Machine Learning capabilities to pro users. Small to Medium sized business may not have the employee count to justify enterprise licenses, but we can still benefit from general capability advancements in the Power BI service/product offering.

Episode 107 – Power BI News and MVP Renewals

This is episode 107 recorded on July 2nd, 2019 where John & Jason talk about MVP Renewals, the World Cup, and a whole bunch of Power BI News including the New Viewer Role for Power BI workspaces, the June dataflows updates, and a new version of Power BI Report Builder.

Show Notes

Power BI Dataflows June 2019 Feature Summary

Announcing the New Viewer Role for Power BI Workspaces

Introducing dataflow templates; A quick and efficient way to build your sales leaderboard and get visibility over your sales pipeline

Avoiding workspace loops by expanding navigation properties in the GetGroupsAsAdmin API

Power BI Paginated Reports June 2019 Feature Update Summary

Announcing support for non-Premium Power BI datasets in Power BI Paginated Report Builder

User Voice Picks

Jason

Power BI Desktop: Option to use either light or dark interface

New Desktop app update installed an almost white user interface. There is zero contrast which is not good for the eyes. I see where some people have requested a light interface so incorporate an option to select either light or dark theme like in the Office apps.

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/37882726-option-to-use-either-light-or-dark-interface

John:

Visibilty (Hide an Item)

Develop an item formatting property which allows to set the visibility of a report item when you want to conditionally hide the item based on a report parameter or some other expression that you specify (also DAX expressions).

You can develop this incrementally starting from visuals, then text boxes, then shapes and buttons….

If you want to go the extra mile, you can also develop a functionality that allows the final user to toggle the visibility of report items.

For more information and since it was an available and really useful capability see “Add an Expand or Collapse Action to an Item (Report Builder and SSRS)”.

I double checked in the ideas database and there are many ideas describing the same functionality; this is the reason why I do believe this is really required and will try to collect all the previous votes under

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/36697297-visibilty-hide-an-item

Episode 106 – A Bearless interview with Chris Finlan

This is episode 106 recorded on June 11th, 2019 at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit where John & Jason talk to Chris Finlan, Senior Program Manager for Power BI at Microsoft, about the recently release features around Paginated Reports in the Power BI Service, Power BI Report Server, and more.

User Voice Picks

John

Allow for simpler account switching between tenants

It is next to impossible to switch between accounts/tenants in the Power BI mobile client. The user must first log out of the existing account/tenant, and then establish a connection with the different tenant. This is a multi-multi step process.

Contrast this with the multi tenant capabilities of the Teams mobile app, or of Outlook, SharePoint etc. We need better account switching in the Power BI mobile app.

Jason

Add an interface in Power BI Reports for browsing shared datasets on the Report Server.

A current capability we use in Power BI Reports on our Power BI Report Server is consuming Shared Datasets that are already on the server. We should have a “Shared Dataset” connector option in Power BI Optimized for Report Server that helps users identify which Shared Dataset are available on the server and the parameters(if any) are required to use the shared dataset. This would be a similar capability that exists in Report Builder when adding shared datasets.

This could be a simple UI that ultimately results in an OData source using the PBI REST API. This would simplify adding shared datasets rather than forcing users to under the REST API. Seems like a low overhead improvement that has high potential

Chris

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 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