Microsoft Power BI January 2025 Update
This was released on January 14th.? The Blog is set out as per previous updates but the video has been split into sections:
·???????? Power BI Update ?- January 2025 (Intro and Copilot & AI)
·???????? Power BI Update - January 2025 | Reporting
·???????? Power BI Update - January 2025 | Modeling
·???????? Power BI Update - January 2025 | Data Connectivity
·???????? Power BI Update - January 2025 | Other & Community Spotlight
You can access them all from this one playlist
There are parts of the blog that are not featured in the Video and I have included one of those below.
Reporting
Not a lot to write home about in here in my opinion unless you embed in PowerPoint on a regular basis – some improvements have been made there.?
They have also improved the save dialogue in Power BI Desktop.? It was not pleasant before so this is a very welcome feature in my mind. ??This is a preview feature that you need to turn on:
They have also made quite a lot of changes to the Treemap visual.? This is a visual type that is not commonly used but there are definitely use cases for them occasionally.? The new formatting options could help tell a much clearer story For more details go to this part of the blog that was not in the video:
领英推荐
Modelling
Semantic model version history (Preview)
This is a premium (or Fabric) preview feature that sounds great but I don’t think it has been rolled out to all regions yet.? Also you need to turn on “Users can edit data models in the Power BI service (preview)” in the Workspace settings before you can access this:
Edit your data model in the Power BI Service – updates (Preview)
This preview feature is turned on by default in Premium workspaces.? Fortunately it defaults to View mode which is a good thing because it would be easy to make accidental edits otherwise.
Additionally I would urge caution when doing this and ensure you establish a consistent development process.? If you edit in the Service one day and in the Desktop the next and publish from Desktop any changes made in the Service will be overwritten.? As far as I can see (after some initial testing) there is no way to synchronise changes made in the Service back to the Power BI (pbix) file irrespective of whether it is sitting in SharePoint or OneDrive and is synched with the service (that appears to be a one-way synch).
I would recommend developing either wholly in Desktop or wholly in the Service and not mixing the two approaches.? The last time I looked into this in a bit of detail it was not possible to do everything in the Service that one can do in Desktop or you would have to do things in a different way so, for now, my recommendation is to use Power BI Desktop for development work.? This may change.
TMDL (Tabular Model Definition Language) scripting experience (Preview)
There is a new preview feature called TMDL View that lets you script, modify, and apply changes to the semantic model in Power BI Desktop.? This feature should appeal to those with a developer background creating complex and/ or multiple models.? It should improve speed of development in these scenarios by allowing code to be easily reused.
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That’s my synopsis for this month, it would be great to hear your thoughts.
Ian
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