Power BI has constant updates. This month's update has a couple very interesting features.
The new Microsoft update brings, as always, many new features. This time there are a couple of very interesting additions. Firstly, Microsoft has begun working on modernizing the appearance of the ribbon of options to bring it closer to that of the Office suite. According to Microsoft, this change is the basis for introducing many more novelties in this aspect in the future, such as night mode, for example, and is being carried out to facilitate the use of the platform. In this first phase, in addition to the change of appearance, the disabled icons have been removed, so that only those that can be used in each view appear.
Reporting
The most interesting novelty of this update is undoubtedly the introduction of the decomposition tree visual. The decomposition tree is used for root cause analysis from the visualization of the contribution of the individual categories to the total. The visual allows to decompose or divide a group in order to see each individual category and see how they can be sorted according to a selected measure, such as the amount of sales. With this graph, you can carry out simulations and predictions that support decision making.
In addition, the visual decomposition tree in Power BI allows data to be visualized across several dimensions. It automatically aggregates the data and allows you to delve into the dimensions in any order. It also has an artificial intelligence visualization, so that it can be asked to find the next dimension to be deepened based on specific criteria. This makes this visual a great tool for ad-hoc exploration and root cause analysis, as well as predicting and simulating.
Analytics
As far as analytics is concerned, the new update offers new features in terms of buttons: now it is possible to dynamically format the color of the text, the line of the icon and the fill, among others.
Visualization
In the visualization section there are also novelties with the update and introduction of several new visuals.
- ArcGIS Maps update. Now this visual has support to connect to ArcGis Enterprise services through authentication. As a novelty, it also allows geocoding up to 3,500 points for free users and up to 10,000 for subscribers.
- New xViz visuals. xViz has two new visuals in this update:
- Advanced Gauge. This speedometer visual allows you to easily compare a real value against a target value. It allows many configuration and customization options, such as the possibility of being a full circle or semicircle and being able to see two different metrics on the same speedometer.
- Hierarchical Filter. The hierarchical filter visual supports hierarchies, advanced formatting and search, among others. Each node can be expanded or collapsed to improve navigation and select more than one category to filter.
- ZoomCharts Drill-Down Waterfall Visual. This visual is equipped with all the ZoomCharts signature features: interactive drill down, smooth animations and rich customization options. This graph provides more freedom and flexibility when viewing increases and decreases.
- Profitbase Financial Reporting Matrix. Profitbase's financial reporting matrix visual is oriented to easily create financial reports.
- Distribution. The Inservit distribution visual allows you to see an indicator for each category of the field that is placed in the visual, much like a legend to filter the report.
- Tree. CK Corporation's tree visual allows you to display hierarchical data in a tree structure.
Data Connectivity
The new update offers connectors with various platforms, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, SAP, Vena, SiteImprove or Product Insights from Dynamics 365.
Data Preparation
The artificial intelligence features introduced this year become available for the desktop version of Power BI. This feature allows you to extract information from text and image data with text and vision analysis models and access Azure Machine Learning models directly in Power BI Desktop.
As always, Power BI updates are loaded with many interesting new features and enhancements. You can see our summary of the update forecast up to 2020 here.
