Welcome to the February 2025 update!
Welcome to our latest blog post, where we are thrilled to introduce some game-changing features for Power BI that will significantly enhance your data analysis experience. First up is the improved modeling performance for live editing of semantic models in Direct Lake mode within Power BI Desktop. This results in at least a 50% improvement in each modeling change.
Additionally, we are excited to unveil the fully interactive Explore feature for Copilot visual answers. Available for both read and edit modes of a report, Explore allows you to filter, sort, or swap field and change visual types easily for ad-hoc exploration. To top it all off, the OneLake catalog is now seamlessly integrated into the Power BI app experience within Microsoft Teams, facilitating effortless collaboration and data sharing among your team members. These enhancements are all about empowering you to work smarter and more collaboratively, transforming the way you handle data in your organization. Let’s dive deeper into each of these features and explore how they can elevate your Power BI experience!
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Version number: v:2.140.1078.0
Date published: 2/20/25
Contents
General
Upgrade Power BI Desktop to 64-bit version
The 32-bit version will no longer be supported after 6/30/2025. Upgrade to the 64-bit version Power BI Desktop to keep receiving updates and support.
Upgrade Power BI Desktop to February 2025 version
To continue using Report view Copilot chat pane, you will need to upgrade to February 2025 version. Report view copilot chat pane might not work as expected for versions before February 2025 after 4/30/2025.
Copilot and AI
Copilot in the Power BI mobile apps: now available on iPads and Android tablets (Preview)
Copilot support is now available in the Power BI Mobile apps on iPads and Android tablets, extending the functionality of AI to more mobile devices. Introduced for phones several months ago, Copilot in the Power BI Mobile apps empowered users to quickly analyze data, gain insights, and make informed decisions on the go. Now, the same powerful capabilities have come to iPads and Android tablets, making it easier than ever for you to explore your data anytime, anywhere.
Getting started with Copilot on your mobile app is easy, simply tap the Copilot button located in the report header (for reports that meet Copilot requirements in Power BI). From there, you can choose whether to receive a summary or uncover insights. Copilot will deliver a response based on your request, which you can then copy, share, or continue interacting with. Suggestions at the bottom of the screen help you refine your request or create new ones, making it simple to explore your data further.
Updated section – ‘How Copilot arrived at this’
We’ve heard an overwhelming amount of feedback that users would like more transparency into how Copilot generates visual answers. This month, we’ve revamped our previous ‘show reasoning’ section to a new detailed section we’re calling ‘How Copilot arrived at this’.
When receiving a visual answer from Copilot, expand this new section to dig into what data (fields/measures) and filters were used to generate the answer. You can also click on the field to see more information like the aggregation or home table.
This is especially helpful when there could be multiple fields with the same name, like having multiple Dates in your data, verifying Copilot picked the correct one.
As a reminder, Copilot does not currently incorporate existing filters from the report when generating a visual answer. This list only contains filters that were used at the time of generating the answer.
This is a step towards increasing transparency in how Copilot understands and generates responses. If you have any additional suggestions, please share your thoughts.
Explore from Copilot visual answers
Sometimes in Copilot, you may want to do a bit more with the visual answer, like drill down, filter it further, maybe even swap it to a different visual type. Until now, the only way to take action on the Copilot generated visual was to add it to the page. This of course was limited to ‘edit mode’ only. But we have great news! This month we’ve replaced the previous ‘expand view’ action with our fully interactive Explore feature. Even better, you can use the feature in both read and edit modes of a report.
With Explore, quick actions are now possible from Copilot. Simply open the Explore experience to filter, sort, swap fields, or change visual types easily for ad-hoc exploration.
You can choose to save the new explore visual to a report or an exploration to come back to.
Note: Saving the new visual to the original report is not yet available.
Explore does have certain limitations, some users may still see the ‘expand view’ button if requirements to use Explore are not met.
Reporting
Conditional formatting support for visual calculations (Preview)
Another month, more updates to visual calculations. This month we are introducing another customer request: support for conditional formatting! You can now use visual calculations to set up conditional formatting rules for columns and measures on your visuals. Also, you can now apply condition formatting rules to visual calculations.
Once you open the conditional formatting dialog you will notice there is a new section that shows the data that’s on your visual. This section includes any column, measure and visual calculations on your visual and will include any hidden fields as well.
For example, here I have a simple visual that shows sales by quarter using a Total Sales measure and the Fiscal Quarter column. I have added a visual calculation that for each quarter calculates the difference with the first quarter:
VSFirst = [Total Sales] - FIRST( [Total Sales] )
I have hidden the VSFirst calculation and am going to use it to set a conditional background color for the fiscal quarter. In the conditional formatting dialog, we see the data in this visual section:
All your model data is still accessible, it is in the ‘All data’ section.
Next, select VSFirst visual calculation and set up the rule as usual:
And the conditional formatting is applied:
As mentioned, you can also format the visual calculations themselves, as done here with the same visual calculation that was made visible to show the result:
Learn more about visual calculations in our documentation and please let us know what you think!
Publish to Web Support for the Azure Maps visual (Coming soon)
We’re excited to announce that Azure Maps support for Publish to Web reports is rolling out. With this update you don’t need to take any extra steps to take advantage of your Azure Map visuals in Publish to Web reports. Just get your embedded code as you normally would using the Publish to Web (public) option under the Embed Report section of the File menu.
From there, you can use the embedded report as you normally would, now with your maps showing.
This update is in the process of rolling out, so you should see the change within the next couple of weeks.
Modeling
Live edit of semantic models in Direct Lake mode with Power BI Desktop – updates (Preview)
Improved modeling performance
We have significantly enhanced the modeling performance for live editing of Direct Lake semantic models using Power BI Desktop. Upgrading to the latest version will result in at least a 50% improvement in each modeling change.
More details on the feature, including requirements, considerations, and limitations can be found in the documentation. We highly value your feedback on this feature and encourage you to share it through our feedback form or the Power BI Community.
Data connectivity
Improvements in Snowflake connector (Preview)
We sincerely appreciate your trial and feedback on the new Snowflake connector released as preview in January. This month, we have enhanced this connector with performance improvements and bug fixes to provide a smoother experience. We invite you to upgrade to the latest version to evaluate these enhancements. Learn more about the Snowflake connector from the documentation.
Use the official ODBC driver to connect to Vertica database (Preview)
This month, we are introducing a new option for getting data from the Vertica database using the official Vertica ODBC driver, currently available in preview. This feature allows you to take advantage of the native client tool provided by the data source. More details about this feature, including the driver installation and configuration instructions, can be found in the documentation.
Visualizations
Drill Down Donut PRO by ZoomCharts
Donut PRO is more than just a beautiful and customizable donut chart visual. It is also a way to instantly make your reports more interactive and user-friendly. Simply click directly on a slice to drill down a level and reveal more details. Donut PRO will also seamlessly cross-filter with other visuals, allowing users to quickly filter data and instantly uncover valuable insights that empower confident business decisions.
Main features:
- Interactivity: Donut PRO provides equally great experience for mouse and touch input – click/tap to drill down, hold to select, triple click/tap to invert selection.
- Animated navigation: Each user interaction has smooth animation feedback that aids with navigation and shows exactly what changed in the chart.
- Multi-level drill down: Create up to nine levels of hierarchy and drill down with just a click.
- Automatic ‘others’ slice: Declutter the chart by grouping smaller slices into one larger slice. Simply click to reveal its contents.
- Cross-chart filtering: Enhance data storytelling by dynamically filtering data across multiple visuals.
- Full customization: Finetune your chart with more than 80 settings, including donut appearance, slice colors, detail labels, legend, and tooltip customization.
- Get on AppSource
Heatmap by Powerviz
The Powerviz Heatmap visualizes data density and value distribution using color gradients, transforming complex datasets into an intuitive matrix format. It is ideal for identifying patterns, correlations, and outliers, aiding data-driven decision-making.
Key features:
- Shapes: Choose from Default, Fixed, or Diverging built-in shapes.
- Data colors: Offers 30+ palettes, color-blind mode, and custom color options.
- Data labels: Select from different styles available or add custom labels with formatting.
- Grid lines: Improve data readability with visual grid lines.
- Reference lines: Highlight key points using X-axis and Y-axis lines.
- Totals: Display row and column totals with advanced bar customization.
- Null values: Customize null values (Blank /NA / Null/ ”0”) and their styling.
- Small multiples: Split visuals into smaller ones using selected fields.
- Conditional formatting: Spot outliers with Value/ Percentage/ Ranking based rules.
- Ranking: Filter Top/Bottom N rows or columns.
Other features included Axis Settings, Grid View, Sorting, Show Condition and more.
Business use cases:
Sales Analysis, Performance Evaluation, Risk Assessment.
- Try Heatmap visual for FREE from App Source
- Check out all features of the visual: Demo_file
- Step-by-step instructions: Documentation
- YouTube video: Video_Link
- Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/visuals
- Follow Powerviz: https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U
Maximize data efficiency with accoMASTERDATA writenback for Power BI
Unlock the power of seamless masterdata management with accoMASTERDATA for Power BI. Streamline your data processes and enhance your writeback capabilities for smarter business decisions.
Key features:
- Effortless writeback: Easily configure writeback to SQL and FABRIC databases. Track changes in a dedicated log for full transparency.
- Full control: Create, update, and delete rows in Masterdata tables to keep your data dynamic and accurate.
- Custom validation: Use regular expressions for custom data validation and ensure integrity.
- Dropdown list validation: Restrict input to predefined options for consistent data entry.
- Conditional formatting & rules: Ensure quality data with powerful validation and formatting tools.
- Enhanced copy-paste: Copy and paste from Excel directly into Power BI while maintaining validation rules.
- Customizable themes: Create visually stunning reports with flexible theme options.
- Tags & column grouping: Organize data with multi-selected tags and improve navigation with collapsible column sections.
Integrating accoMASTERDATA with Power BI will supercharge your data management, improve reporting, and streamline your operations. Start transforming your data handling today!
Visit our website for more.
Other
The OneLake catalog is now available in Microsoft Teams
The OneLake catalog is now integrated into the Power BI app experience in Microsoft Teams, enabling seamless data discovery and exploration within the Microsoft Office ecosystem. This integration empowers business users and professionals to interact with their data – explore it, take actions, and more – all without leaving Teams.
Monitoring Hub enhancement for Semantic models
In Fabric Monitoring Hub, you can centrally monitor Microsoft Fabric activities. It displays refresh activities for all semantic models, each showing one line with the status of the last refresh.
Previously, clicking on an activity name in the Monitoring Hub directed you to the semantic model detail page. This month, we’re introducing the Semantic model refresh detail page. This new page shows comprehensive details of a selected refresh activity, including capacity, gateway, start and end times, error details, and multiple refresh attempts.
For each refresh attempt, you can view the execution metrics by clicking on the ‘Show’ link in the ‘Execution details’ column. This information can assist with troubleshooting or optimizing the semantic model refresh. Previously, this data was accessible through Log Analytics or Fabric Workspace Monitoring.
It’s also possible to link refresh details from external applications. The semantic model refresh detail page can be accessed from other locations by constructing a URL with the workspace, semantic model, and refresh ID:
https://app.powerbi.com/groups/{workspaceId}/datasets/{semanticModelId}/refreshdetails/{refreshId}
For instance, this Fabric Notebook uses semantic link sempy and Power BI API Get Refresh History to create a refresh detail URL for each run of a semantic model:
import sempy
import sempy.fabric as fabric
import pandas as pd
workspaceId = "[Your Workspace Id]"
semanticModelId = "[Your semantic model Id]"
client = fabric.FabricRestClient()
response = client.get(f"/v1.0/myorg/groups/{workspaceId}/datasets/{semanticModelId}/refreshes")
refreshHistory = pd.json_normalize(response.json()['value'])
refreshHistory["refreshLink"] = refreshHistory.apply(lambda x:f"https://msit.powerbi.com/groups/{workspaceId}/datasets/{semanticModelId}/refreshdetails/{x['requestId']}", axis=1)
displayHTML(refreshHistory[["requestId", "refreshLink"]].to_html(render_links=True, escape=False))
More details on the feature can be found in the data refresh data refresh documentation.
That’s all for this month!
We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review.
As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
