Microsoft released the March update on the last day of the month, the full details can be found on the Power BI blog. As this update coincides with FabCon there are a lot of interesting features but a couple of preview features that caught my eye are:
Annotating Visuals in PowerPoint
As someone who has spent time in my career using the snipping tool to add visuals to PowerPoint decks the ability to directly embed Power BI visuals is great. This has now been enhanced with the ability to add annotations to the visual. Users can now focus on highlighting key points, adding context and commentary to explain the charts.
This works on individual visuals embedded in PowerPoint not whole report pages. To use just right click on the datapoint you want to annotate and select the annotate option.
You can then add comments to the visual. You can move the boxes to place them appropriately. The formatting options are currently limited for example you can change the font but not the colour of the box, but I’m sure this will be addressed before it comes out of preview.
A few things to note
- You might want to switch off live data, otherwise your annotations might not make sense after a data refresh
- Annotations are currently only available for certain core visuals.
Use Fabric Notebooks to Analyse your Semantic Model
You can now analyse your semantic models in the Power BI Service via Model Health. This uses Fabric notebooks and semantic link to create tools to analyse the model.
The first notebook that is available will run Best Practice Analyzer which has been something in Tabular Editor I’ve often used to identify issues with models, so it is great to see it here.
The second is Memory Analyser that give you information on the model including the tables and columns, something I’ve used external tools to get previously.
There is now also a Notebook Gallery that I’m sure will see many additional notebooks added by the community.
Conclusion
There are many interesting new features this month, if you want help with any of these or with any other aspect of Power BI please let us know.