Microsoft Power BI February 2025 Update
This was released on 21st February.? It is quite limited this month and Microsoft get quite a bit of flack about that in the comments of the intro video. Personally I like smaller, high quality releases but there is a question of whether there is much in this release that is of value to the majority of users.
In short there are some Copilot improvements, conditional formatting support for visual calculations (Preview) and performance improvements for live edit of semantic models and the Snowflake connector.? Additionally Publish to Web Support for the Azure Maps visual is coming soon.
The Blog has links to all of the videos
I did not see a playlist this month.
Again there are parts of the blog that are not featured in the videos and I have included some of those in my abridged synopsis below.? I also included a TIP and a SIDE COMMENT
General
Upgrade Power BI Desktop to 64-bit version
If you happen to have a 32-bit version it will not be supported after 30 June 2025.
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.
TIP??????? If your organisation allows you to install from the Microsoft Store, the monthly updates happen automatically.
Copilot and AI
Copilot is still not available in Power BI Desktop unless your organisation has a Power BI Premium P1 capacity or Fabric F64 capacity.? These are expensive and out of reach for most of our clients.? Until this changes maybe use Chat GPT or one of the ever growing AI options.
In any case the following are the updates to Copilot this month but I did not think any of them were groundbreaking:
Reporting
Conditional formatting support for visual calculations (Preview)
This is definitely a good move, I wanted to do exactly this very recently but couldn’t.
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.
Publish to Web Support for the Azure Maps visual (Coming soon)
A limited use base for this feature I imagine but very important for that group of users that want or need to show Azure maps in embedded reports.? I can only presume that before this update they just didn’t work.? It seems that this is a service setting that will be rolled out across regions over time.?
SIDE COMMENT ??????? One never quite knows when updates happen in the service – sometimes we get surprises when we go to the service and things have moved or new icons have arrived!
Modeling
Live edit of semantic models in Direct Lake mode with Power BI Desktop – updates (Preview)
There are performance improvements with this functionality here apparently but I personally haven’t used this feature yet.
Data Connectivity
There are also performance improvements in the Snowflake connector (Preview).? I have just been working with a client using a connection to Snowflake and the data refreshes in Power Query were painfully slow.? I hope this changes that!
?
That is it from me for this month. Nothing super exciting but there are a few useful improvements in the February release if they live up to their promises.
Ian