Power BI : Simple Updates, Big Time Saving (Top 5)

Microsoft Keeps innovating and updating features in Power BI at rapid pace and the last few months (4-5 months) have been no exception!

This article explores 5 recent updates which I liked the most . These updates really seem simple in nature but can save significant time and effort. Its time to get ready to unlock a wave of these features and streamline your workflow.

1. New Manage relationships dialog : No more hunting for the right connection! The new "Manage relationships" dialog provides a central hub to easily view, edit, and create relationships between your tables in Power BI.

All relationships in a single view & say goodbye to relationship management headaches !

Using Ellipsis button one can change status from active to inactive for a relationship.

Easy Filtering of relationships on the basis of Cardinality and Cross-Filter Direction :

2. Improved readability and Clearer Presentation for Matrix Visual: With the introduction of Blank rows , Repeat row headers (For Tabular & Outline Layout) in matrix visual, this provides enhanced focus and clearer presentation for matrix visual.

So now we can make use blank rows feature , this really Improves readability by eliminating visual clutter and highlights populated cells with valuable data points.

By repeating the row headers , one can improve readability and Eliminate the need to constantly scroll back to reference headers, improving navigation & data exploration.

Here in the below example : We are showing profit and Sales for different segments across all countries in matrix visual.

In the first column Country "Canada" is repeating since we have enabled "repeat row headers" option.

Second we have an empty row since we have enabled blank rows feature . Providing a better distinction and clearer view. Showing clearly where Canada data is ending and where France data is starting.

3. Download Large Power BI Models for Faster Editing and Collaboration : As we know that Power BI semantic models can store data in a highly compressed in-memory cache for optimized query performance, enabling fast user interactivity.

In Premium capacities, we can enable the Large semantic model storage format setting. When enabled, semantic model size is limited by the Premium capacity size or the maximum size set by the administrator.

But when it comes to downloading a report with large semantic model, Power BI was putting a stop sign to download this (Only live connection was allowed) .

But here is the good news, now this restriction is revoked and even with the large semantic model , Now one has full flexibility to open and edit reports and the large model itself as a .pbix file all within Desktop!

This unlocks the full end to end Power BI Desktop authoring experience.

4. "Apply All Slicers button" in Optimize tab :

First question comes to mind, why is this present under optimize tab ?

Here is an example to answer this:

Let's say we have a report with five slicers (Country, Segment, Product ,Category, Region). Without the "Apply All Slicers" button, here's what might happen:

1. You select a Country in the Country slicer. This triggers a query to the data source to filter the data for that specific Country. The visuals on the report update to reflect this selection.
2. You then select a Product in the Product slicer. Another query is sent to the data source, this time filtering the data for the chosen Country and Product. The visuals update again.
3. You continue selecting options in the remaining slicers. Each selection triggers a separate query to the data source, applying the additional filters one by one.

This can be inefficient, especially for large datasets. Each query takes time to process, and the visuals update multiple times, potentially causing performance issues for users.

Here "Apply All Slicers" is savior :

1. You select all your desired options across the five slicers.
2. Instead of sending individual queries for each selection, clicking "Apply All Slicers" triggers a single query to the data source. This query applies all the slicer selections at once, filtering the data for the specific combination you chose.
3. The visuals update only once, reflecting the final filtered data set.

This single, combined query after using "Apply All Slicers" is generally much faster than sending multiple individual queries. This can significantly improve the performance of your report, especially when dealing with large datasets or complex filters.

Here is the illustration :

In the above illustration , we can see that user has made selections in the slicer but matrix visual is not filtered and we can also see the message "Not yet applied" in the respective slicers.

After hitting "Apply all slicers" button :

Now selected slicers are applied .Single combined query is sent to the dataset which leads to better performance.

5. Moving Pages to left, right, front and end : This was much required feature from Microsoft.

Folks who moved pages by dragging and dropping individually , can understand how important this feature is ! For the reports which were having 20+ pages , this page movement was very frustrating and inefficient. Specially when one has to bring the last page at the front (1st page), one had have to drag this page from the last place to 1st place iterating through each page in between.

Now users can move report pages more efficiently using the on-screen buttons instead of relying on the scrolling through a long list of pages.

We've explored some of the latest and impactful features of Power BI, but the conversation doesn't end here. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with these features. Thanks!