2016-02-19-Power-BI-Uopdate-4mbps
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[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
>> Hello, everyone.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
We're here another master talk
about Power BI Desktop update.
[MIGUEL LLOPIS
Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft]
This is the February 2016 update
[MIGUEL LLOPIS
Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft]
and we have lots and lots of
new features
[MIGUEL LLOPIS
Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft]
across new report
offering capabilities,
[MIGUEL LLOPIS
Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft]
new data modeling capabilities,
lots of new data connectivity,
[MIGUEL LLOPIS
Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft]
functionality as well.
In fact, we have
so many new features
in this desktop release
that it is so hot
and my machine is soon
going to go on fire
as you can see.
So now, let's actually go and
dig deeper into the features.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update? Report Authoring]
The first group of features this month,
[Report Authoring]
it's about report
offering capabilities.
[Report Authoring]
The first feature this month
is something that has been
[Report Authoring]
long requested by many of you
is the ability to see the data
[Report Authoring]
that's behind a visual
[Report Authoring]
and also being able to export
that data to a CSV file.
[Report Authoring]
Let's go and take a look
at this feature.
I'm gonna switch
to an existing report
and we can select
this bar chart visual.
We can go into focus mode
by clicking this little icon
in the top right corner and now
while you're in focus mode,
you notice this new icon
on the top right that says see data.
When you click this button,
you're gonna see the view is split
between the bar chart
and the actual table
that has the data
behind the visual.
This is basically for each
of the values in the axis
that we've shown here,
the actual value for the measure.
And then we can also do
a few more things in this view.
We can switch this
to a vertical layout
just so that it looks
better in some cases,
depending on the data you have,
you want to have this
different aspect ratio.
And the other thing
that you can do from here
is going to the dot-dot-dot
and select the export data option.
This will basically allow you
to create a CSV file
that will contain the data
that we've just seen in this table,
it would match this content.
So pretty valuable,
pretty long requested feature
from many of you,
we hope you enjoy it.
We'll do more improvements
along this direction
with exporting data, not just
for data behind the visual,
but the actual data in the
entire table in the data model.
That will be coming
in a few months,
so stay tuned and please
continue sending us
feedback about this capability.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The second new feature this month
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
is a set of improvements
to map visualizations.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So, basically what we're doing
is simplifying the way that maps work
and before it used to be that
you had to provide a location field
which was a text field
with the actual location display
text or name of the street
or the city,
and also the latitude
and longitude
for that specific data point.
Now, we've actually simplified
this so that
it no longer requires you
to provide the location field,
so just with latitude
and longitude,
you will be fine to visualize
your data in a map.
The next feature in the list
is KPI Consumption.
We actually have this feature
as preview feature
for the last few months.
Now this month, it becomes
a GA supported feature,
and along with that we have
a couple of improvements,
which include support
for navigation hierarchies
as well as support
for displaying KPI trends
as part of your
AS multidimensional models.
Let's go and take a look
at how this feature works.
So we have an existing report
that's connected live
against analysis side,
this is multidimensional.
As you can see as I dig down
in the fields pane,
you start seeing
display folders as well.
This is another
new feature this month.
And then when I dig into grow
revenue, you see a KPI here.
When I expand the KPI, you see
that we can access the value
and the goal, the status
and the trend.
So let's go and build a table
visual that has these values.
Let me show you what the KPI
visualization looks like,
so you can actually
use the value.
Let's also show the goal,
the status and the trend,
so you can see how we have
not just the actual values
for the value and the goal,
but also an indicator
for the status
which could be red, yellow or green
depending on the current status
capturing in the model.
And also the trend,
in this case, it's been stable.
So that's a pre- important
feature, you know,
something that we've had
as a preview feature
for a few months.
And based on your feedback,
we've actually made
these improvements in the last,
in this last update
and then gradually
they featured to GA,
so we encourage all of you
to go start using it
more broadly in your
production scenarios and reports
and continue sending us feedback
if you find anything
that should be or could be
improving the feature.
Let's go back into the list
of new features.
The next feature we kind of
already covered
is the support for display folders
in the fields pane
when you work in analysis services
exploration mode.
So let's go into the next one.
We've made a few improvements
to the ribbon layout
while you are working
in the report view.
We've actually split the single
home tab in the ribbon
within two tabs now.
We have a new tab
for contextual report tools.
They are contextual tools,
the visualizations
that you have selected
in the report canvas.
Let's go and take a look
at how this feature works.
We go back to our
existing report here
and you notice that if I don't have
any visuals selected,
I only see the home tab
and the modeling tab.
You might be missing some
options in the home tab
that used to be there like,
for instance, alignment options,
editing interactions
between visuals,
bringing visuals forward
or sending them backwards
in your C axis.
We've actually moved those
features to this new report tools tab
which shows up
as long as you select
one or more visuals
in the canvas.
So now that I've selected one,
you see these new visual tools format,
and here you have
all of the options
that used to be in the home tab.
The reason
why we did this again was
because we've been having
so many features to the report,
to the report canvas
and to the home tab in the ribbon,
that it actually became
too many elements in the home tab
that it was hard to visualize
in some smaller monitors
for some users.
So we actually made this
to optimize the layout a little bit
and give you a more focused
experience for actually
formatting and interacting
with your visualizations.
Going back to the list,
we also have a new
visualization this month.
It's a new visualization
that's specialized for visualizing KPIs,
so it's gonna allow you
to basically,
allow to visualize
the current KPI value
and also the trend over time.
And also be able to compare that
with target values
which you can set either
through a measure
or based on a different field
in your model.
Let's go and take a look
at how this new visualization
for KPIs work.
We switch into a report
that's basically, it's empty right now,
it only has a few tables in the model,
it has a table for sales,
and within sales, I have
a couple of interesting fields,
I have units, I have revenue
and I also have targets.
I have a desired target
and the min target.
But you can find
the new KPI visualization
on the visualizations tab.
When you click it,
it will get out into the canvas.
So from here, I can now add
the fields to the visualizations pane,
so that for instance,
let's get something like the units.
And we're gonna use
the units as the indicator.
So we're basically gonna be
tracking the total units
sold as our KPI.
And then we also need to specify
a trend axis
so that we can measure how
the KPI has been doing over time.
So this is generally
going to be date field.
We're gonna use
the date field over here.
Actually, I picked
the wrong date field,
so I'm gonna go into the
date table and I'm gonna pick
the date field from here,
that looks better.
So what you see right now is
the current value for units sold,
so it's units sold in
the latest year in the series,
which in this case is 2015.
So that means,
we sold 233k units last year.
And you can also see the trend,
so it's actually been going down,
but you notice how the color
on the visual is actually grey.
So why is this?
This is basically the color
that we're using to represent that,
right now this is the current value
and the trend for the KPI,
but it is neutral because
we haven't really assigned the target,
so we don't really know
if 233k units sold last year
was good or was bad
or was just average
because we haven't defined
those targets.
So for that we can use
the min target
and desired target
that I've defined here.
These are actually very simple
measures that I defined
just for the sake of the demo,
so I defined the KPI,
the desired target
as being 1.2 times
the actual value of the KPI
and the min target it's just 0.8.
So of course now, if we drag
the min target
to the target goals bucket,
you're gonna see it turn green
because it's basically
telling us
that we're selling about
25 percent above the min target
that we were shooting for,
so it's gonna turn into green.
It also shows a tick over here
to display the fact
that we are above our target.
Now, you could change this
to be just the desired target.
And so I remove the min target
and I add the desired one.
And in this case, it actually
shows you in red
because it's of course telling us
that we are underperforming,
we've sold 16.67 percent less
than we were expecting
or that we were targeting for.
Now, you could also have
a little bit more of an advanced case
or more customized experience
if you define
multiple target goals.
So if I drag the min target
to the target goals
and then I drag the desired target,
this is gonna basically color code this
with a third stage
which is the yellow.
Yellow means we are in between
the lower target and the higher target,
but we still didn't meet
the higher target,
so that we are kind of
in that yellow area,
it's a mild sentiment,
if you will, for that KPI.
Now, the other interesting thing
that I can show you here,
and it goes back to the feature
that I just showed you with C data
is that we can go and see
the actual data behind.
In this case, it actually makes
more sense
to use a vertical view.
And you can see what the data is
being displayed in this KPI visual.
We're displaying data
since 1999 till 2015
with the total units sold by year
along with the minimum
and desired targets for each year
and that's basically
what's mapping to the values
being displayed
in the KPI visual.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
All right, so going back
to the list of features.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next improvement this month
is kind of a usability
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
or kind of a shortcut improvement
for people reopening their reports.
We're basically making it such
that if you clear a report
or you view a report
and you look at a specific page
that's not the first page.
Like let's say you go to
page number 3 in your report
and then you close your report
while you're in page number 3.
The next time that you come back
and you open that report again,
it will go straight to page 3.
This kind of
a little usability improvement
we have from some people
that they would like to customize
that comeback experience,
so now you have it
and we hope you enjoy it.
The next item on the list
is the ability to jump straight
into the edit query option
from within the fields pane,
so basically you're gonna be
able to select the specific table
in the fields pane
and say edit query
and that will bring you back
to the Query Editor dialog
and select that query for you.
Let's take a look at
how this feature works.
We're going back to our report,
so let's say that we would
like to modify
the order details table.
I can click
the dot-dot-dot
or right click
to get into the context menu.
And from here, I have this
new edit query option.
When I click it, it will bring up
the Query Editor
and it's gonna show me
this order details table.
I actually had to renew by creds
so bear with me on that.
I'm gonna use my current
and connect.
So this actually lets me...
Now, get straight into
the order details table,
which is exactly the one
that I wanted to modify
since I was like coming
from the report view.
So no more need to go
into the edit queries view
and then find your table
in the queries pane on the left.
You can just jump straight to the one
that matters to you at that time.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The last new feature on the
report offering this month
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
is the ability to duplicate pages
directly from the ribbon.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Let's go and take a look
at how this feature works.
We used to have the option
to duplicate page from the right click menu
on the page tab
at the bottom of the screen.
Now, we've also added this
under the new page option
in the ribbon.
It used to be new page
as blank page.
Now, we've actually turned that
into a split button
that gives you either new page,
blank page
if you click on the top of the
split button on the bottom.
And then if you
go into the dropdown,
you have this second option
to duplicate the current page.
And that will give you a duplicate
just as you would do
through the right click menu,
but we heard the feedback
that it was much more efficient
for people to do it
from the new page menu
and it was kind of a nice addition
and, you know, low hanging fruit
for us to go do, so, here it is.
More goodness coming
to the ribbon this month.
Going back to the list.
[Data Modeling]
We can now switch
to the next category
[Data Modeling]
of improvements this month,
[Data Modeling]
which is improvements within
the data modeling category.
[Data Modeling]
The first one has been also
very commonly and frequently requested
[Data Modeling]
from many of you
for the last several months
[Data Modeling]
is the ability to define hierarchies
using Power BI Desktop.
How cool is that?
Yes, it's really cool and it actually
opens up lots of new capabilities
with Power BI Desktop
so that you can create
your custom hierarchies within
the fields pane in the report view
and you're gonna be able to also
use these hierarchies in your visuals.
So, for instance, you could
combine the power of hierarchies,
custom hierarchies
with the ability to configure
drill down and drill up behaviors
in your visuals
and that's gonna open up lots of
new capabilities for you
in your report
browsing experiences.
Let's go and take a look
at how this feature works.
I have a report here
and I'm gonna go
and make this visual a little bit smaller,
move it to the side.
So we're gonna go and look at
total sales by country
and then we're also actually gonna
expand that into hierarchy
so that we can look at sales by state
and sales by city as well.
We're gonna dig into
the orders table.
This is the one in which
I have my ship country,
ship city and also
the ship address,
so we can actually define here
the hierarchy
by right clicking into a field
and we have this new hierarchy option.
Once I click that,
with ship country,
we're gonna define
the hierarchy.
And it's empty
for now, so I can,
it only have ship country
which is the one I right click on,
so I can start adding
new fields in here.
I can go into ship, ship city,
right click
and say out to the
ship country hierarchy.
And then we can also right click
on ship address
and add that
to the same hierarchy.
We can also rename the hierarchy
'cause the default name
it's kind of ugly, it's just
the original field dot hierarchy,
so we can actually rename
that to say "location."
And now, we can
create a new visual,
let's say we're gonna
create a new column chart.
And we can use total sales
as the value
which I have out here
in my order details table.
And we can drag
the location into the axis.
So that now we are looking
at the hierarchy in our custom...
Sorry, we're looking
at the custom hierarchy
within our column chart.
And you notice how it defaults
to the top level of hierarchy,
ship country.
We can actually remove fields
from here
if you're wanting to skip
one of the levels of the hierarchy
for the navigation.
In this case, I'm just going
to keep them all
but you can see how now I could
either drill all to the next level,
so I'm gonna see total sales
by city across all countries
or if I go back up, I could enable
drill down mode
and I could drill down
to a specific country like,
for instance,
let's go into the USA.
And then we can see
the next level of details
for sales by city in the USA.
And we can even dig deeper
and pick something like Portland
and we can see down
to the street level, in this case,
the final average for those
customers within Portland.
We're also planning to make
additional enhancements
to these hierarchies support
over the next couple of months,
so stay tuned for that.
The first one that we're
actually planning to do is
concatenate the names
within the hierarchy level,
so for instance, in this level
I should be able to see
USA/Seattle/USA/Portland.
And likewise when I drill
into the next level,
I should see USA, Portland
and then the actual address,
so that you keep notion of the
context that you're within
your hierarchy levels
and the selections
you made in previous levels.
So more to come on that
over the next couple of months.
We hope you enjoyed
the current set
of capabilities for hierarchies.
We know,
it's a huge milestone for us.
It brings a lot of new capabilities
to Power BI Desktop
and we're looking forward
to your feedback
and to continue making improvements
over the next few months.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Going back to the list.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next improvement this month
is performance improvement,
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
so you'll actually notice that
as you rename tables and columns
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
within the data view
or the report view,
those are actually
gonna be much faster.
It used to take
before a few seconds
and it used to do some reload
and refresh operations
for the data, for the metadata.
Now, it actually will happen straight
and you will not notice
any lag in those renames.
So again, another one of those things
that we're working a lot incrementally
with lots of performance improvements
coming here and there
across the product every month.
[Data Connectivity]
The last group of improvements
this month is around data connectivity
[Data Connectivity]
and we have long list here,
[Data Connectivity]
so we're gonna go
and talk about it for a little while.
[Data Connectivity]
The first item is
a new DirectQuery support
[Data Connectivity]
for Oracle and Teradata.
[Data Connectivity]
As you know, we provided
or enabled DirectQuery support,
[Data Connectivity]
so that people could work
directly against their
[Data Connectivity]
remote data sources
while interacting with their reports.
[Data Connectivity]
We added this a few months ago
for a few different data sources
[Data Connectivity]
including SQL Server, SQL Azure,
SQL Azure data warehouse
[Data Connectivity]
and also SAP HANA,
[Data Connectivity]
we GAed all of those capabilities
about a month or two ago.
[Data Connectivity]
Now, this month we're also
expanding to a few more data sources,
[Data Connectivity]
which include Oracle
and Teradata databases.
[Data Connectivity]
The only thing to keep in mind
though is that
[Data Connectivity]
this is a preview
feature for now,
so you'll actually have to go
and turn on this preview feature.
Let's go and see where
you can actually turn this on.
You can go into the file menu.
Go into the options dialog
through options and settings
and within here under global
you have this preview features tab.
You can come here
to actually enable
DirectQuery for Oracle
and Teradata.
You also have learn more
as a place to go
so that can you find more information
about what this feature does.
Basically, once you enable this,
you will be able to go,
connect to Oracle, for instance,
and you will be able to
then specify the connection mode
as you select data
and then finally click load.
They're pretty much just like
it works for the other data sources
like SQL Server and Azure
and HANA that we used to support,
but it's just I think this support
for this two new data sources as well.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The other enhancement that
we're making this month
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
for DirectQuery is the ability
to create calculated columns.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Last month we added the ability
to create measures.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
This month we're expanding
that set of capabilities for DirectQuery
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
so that it also supports
calculated columns.
Again, another pretty important
capability within DirectQuery mode
that we're enabling
and will continue making
more and more improvements to
DirectQuery over the next few months.
It's one of our bigger areas
of investments
right now within the desktop.
So stay tuned for more improvements
coming on DirectQuery soon.
Then next item on the list
is the ability to,
when you publish analysis
services live report,
be able to select which gateway,
which enterprise gateway
you would like to use for this
report to be able to hit
the underlying or the on-prem
analysis service model
from powerbi.com.
So basically the situation
before this update was that,
once you connected,
or once you published a report
that connected to analysis
services live,
if you had only one enterprise
gateway configured,
it will just work, but if you have
multiple enterprise
gateways available to you,
it will actually fail
because it wouldn't know
which one of those two
or multiple gateways to use.
So we're actually now adding
a new dialog
as part of the publish workflow,
so that you can select
which gateway you would like to use
for actually refreshing
and connecting that report
to the underlying
analysis services model.
The next feature this month
is a new connector for JSON files.
Let's go and take a look
at this connector.
So we used to have the ability
to connect to JSON data
through either the web connector
or any of the front file options.
And if you ended up
picking a JSON file,
we would be able to understand
that file just fine.
So what we're adding this month
is not the capability
to import JSON data
which was already there,
it's been there
for years actually,
but actually the discoverability
of that entry point.
So now when you go to get data,
we have within file,
we have a new entry point
for JSON.
So when you select that option,
it will filter down to JSON,
the jsonextension.jsonextension.
And then it will give you
the ability to select that file
and click open.
So now what we're gonna do
is actually parse that employees file,
it returns a list of records.
So if we look at the original
JSON file, it looked like this.
It's a list of employees,
a list of records
with employee information.
What we need to do now
is actually
convert this list into a table.
And from here you can actually
expand this field
and it gives me the first name and
last name and when I expand them,
they just look like
you would expect,
so you have a table
with two columns,
that maps to the data that was
available in the JSON file.
Again, this is available not just
through the front file menu
but actually if you use a URL
that connects to a JSON
to an end point that returns
a JSON file or a JSON data,
it would actually
parse it the same way.
So you can use this to connect
to any rest APIs
that return JSON data out there
or if you have a local file
you could also go through with JSON file.
[Data connectivity]
The next feature this month
is a new connector for SQL Sentry.
[Data connectivity]
We are very glad to be
bringing this new connector.
[Data connectivity]
SQL Sentry allows you
to actually monitor
[Data connectivity]
and share performance
and operational data
[Data connectivity]
collected from your SQL Server
[Data connectivity]
and it actually includes things
like server health information,
[Data connectivity]
server availability, disk,
memory, CPU utilization.
We shipped a few ago
the same connector for,
well, the content pack for
SQL Sentry in the powerbi.com
as a content pack.
And we also wanting
to complement that
with out of the box connector,
so you could actually create your
SQL Sentry reports from scratch,
combine them with any other data
coming from any other data source
that you connect
to with Power BI Desktop
and bring lots and lots of new value
to your users
that can now monitor SQL Sentry data
within Power BI Desktop reports
and in powerbi.com.
So we're looking forward to your
feedback about this connector
and, of course,
we'll continue bringing
lots and lots of new connectors every month,
so keep your feedback
coming on that as well.
The next feature this month,
it's an enhancement
to the CSV connector
in Power BI Desktop,
so that it now supports
jagged CSV files.
Let's take a look at
what we mean by that.
I have the following CSV file
here in Excel
where you notice that I have data,
for the first column I have...
For the first row
I have four columns.
Now for the second column,
for the second row,
I only have three.
The last column is empty.
So it used to be before that
if you try to import this data
into Power BI Desktop,
it will actually not know
how to properly detect that
these actually had four columns
and then the first row
had only three
so it would leave
the last one blank.
Now, we've actually improved
our detection logic in this case,
it's supported, so if we go back
into Power BI Desktop
and we add the new data.
We add new data form CSV.
We can pick the jagged CSV file.
And now we're gonna preview
and you see how it actually
properly detects these tables,
so now we can say load
and it will just work for us.
So small improvement, you know,
optimization of CSV
is one of the most popular connectors
in Power BI Desktop
and we continue making improvements
over time on it,
so please keep your
feedback coming.
The next improvement this month
is new OAuth
or organizational account support
for connecting to exchange.
Now you can use OAuth when you
actually connect to exchange
so you will see these when you
connect through the exchange connector
and you will be prompted
for credentials
that you have a second tab
within the credentials dialog
that will let you use OAuth connectivity,
OAuth credentials type.
The next improvement this month
is also kind of a usability improvement
for one of our existing
connectors,
which is the SharePoint
List Connector.
We notice that many people
when they try to connect to their SharePoint,
to a SharePoint List,
they actually provide the wrong URL,
so there's basically
two right choices.
You could connect to the
specific SharePoint List
by using the old data connector
if you have the actual URL
straight to the list or if you're wanting
to use the SharePoint List connector,
you need to provide the URL
to the root of your SharePoint site.
And that will basically detect
all of the SharePoint Lists
within your site and let you pick
the one you want to use.
So now if you go into
the SharePoint List dialog
and you provide a URL
that doesn't look the root URL,
we'll actually give you an
error message
and tell you that you need
to provide the better URL
and we will not let you click
next or connect
until you provide that right URL,
so we're trying to avoid you
extra steps in the flow
to get down to something
that's a narrower path.
So we're trying to simplify
that experience.
The next new item this month,
going back to the list,
is set of improvements
to the database connectors.
This actually allows you
to disable navigational columns
when you're, when you're
connecting to databases,
so basically navigation columns
are extremely useful
when you try to either expand
or aggregate fields
from a related table
in a database.
For instance, if you're looking
at a customers table
that has relationships
to an order table,
you could actually see these
navigational columns
in the customer's table to orders,
so that you could expand fields
from the orders table,
so for instance, you could get
all the orders for every single customer
and expand them into new rows
in the customers table
or you could even do
aggregate operations.
So for instance, you could go into
these navigation columns for orders
and you do the sum
of the total order price
and things that will let you promote
aggregated values from the order tables
right from within
the customers table.
Now, that's a very useful capability
but it also comes at a price
which is there's a performance hit
and it actually will take longer
to load your customers table
if Power BI Desktop needs
to analyze and detect
and load these navigational columns
for orders and maybe other tables
like suppliers or employees
or something like that.
So what we actually did
in this release
is allow you to specify
from the data source builder,
from the data source dialog
an option to say,
"I would not like or I would like to
import this relationships or not."
So, let's go and take a look
at how that works.
Let's go and take a look
at how this feature works
in Power BI Desktop, so we are
back into our existing report.
I'm gonna go into get data
and I'm going to go into
the databases category
and I'll select Oracle.
We've actually made this capability
available for all of the databases
within this list except
for SQL Server database and Azure.
That will be coming
in a subsequent update,
so stay tuned for that.
So let's select,
for instance, Oracle.
Now, we've seen
the data source dialog here,
you can specify the server
and you also get this extra option
to import relationships
between tables.
The default is checked which
matches preview's capability
or the preview's functionality
before this update.
Now if you uncheck this
and you connect,
you will notice that there is
a much slower or it's much faster
to actually load your list of tables
as well as the previews
for each specific table.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Going back to the list.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next improvement this month
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
is improvement to the
credentials prompt.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
When you connect
to web data source
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
that will allow you
to specify the level at which
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
you would like to apply the credentials
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
or the privacy levels
that you're being prompt for.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So basically now you're gonna be able to pick
any level from within the hierarchy.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
It used to be the case
before that you would only be able to pick
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
either the domain level or the specific URL
that you are connecting to.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Now you get a dropdown
where you can pick any level from the hierarchy.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So that will help you better organize
and manage the scopes
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
for your credentials and privacy levels
in Power BI Desktop.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next improvement this month
is a set of enhancements to the enter data dialog.
We ship this feature back in December,
the enter data dialog,
and it was really popular.
It allows users to either create a table manually
or paste in some content from the clipboard.
So this month we're improving that dialog
so that it does things like, for instance,
automatically detecting headers
when you're pasting data.
Let's go and take a look.
I'm going back to my existing report
and I'm gonna click enter data which is available
from the home tab in the ribbon.
And I get to the create table dialog here.
Let's make it a little bit smaller
so it fits my screen.
Now I'm gonna go into excel where I have a table.
One of my favorite tables ever, this is fruits.
So I'm gonna copy this two-column table with fruit
and quantity, you would expect that the first
column should be detected as column headers
because it clearly because of the quantity column
where all the row values are numbers
except for the first one.
This clearly demonstrates
or indicates that the first row here
would actually be the column headers.
So when we come back to create table,
I can just do a ctrl+v.
Maybe if I did a ctrl+c
before that would work better.
And now when you paste,
it actually paste it that way.
In fact, I'm gonna repeat it again
because you would...
I was already selecting the first table,
sorry, the first row or the header row.
So it actually thought
that I was just knowing that
but if I come in without
even selecting the column headers
and I paste in, I'm gonna get this warning on top
that tells me that
we've automatically promoted the first row
to become the column headers.
You could undo from here but in this case,
I'm good with that
so I can just click load at this point
and get my new table loaded.
So a little usability improvement
on top of this feature
will make things simpler for you to work with
when you create your tables
through the enter data dialog.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next two features are
actually enhancements through SAP HANA.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
We've enhanced the SAP HANA connecter which,
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
as you know, became a GA
supported connecter last month.
This month we're actually improving it
in two different ways.
The first one is that
we're supporting single sign on
with windows authentication.
Notice that this feature is actually
only available within power BI desktop right now.
So if you use this single sign on,
it's only within desktop.
When you go configure your enterprise gateway
for SAP HANA,
you will not have this option available
but you can start using it now
with Power BI Desktop.
The second improvement this month for SAP HANA
is supporting field labels.
So if you have field labels,
they will start showing up in your navigator,
if you go through import mode
or if you use direct query as well.
And you will be available to access them
and see the actual field label values
within this navigation experience.
The next improvement this month,
and we're getting now
into the query transformation capabilities.
It's the...
It's an enhancement
to the existing choose column dialog.
It's a very common piece of feedback
from many of you
that you would like to customize
the order of the columns
that show up in these dialog.
By default we would show the natural order
which basically means the order
in which those columns show up in your table.
But many of you have expressed that
it will be much more easy for you to use
if this set of columns were sorted alphabetically.
So we've added now an option
so you can, you could pick the sort mode.
And let's go and take a look
at how this looks like in the latest update.
We're going back to Power BI Desktop.
We'll go into edit queries.
And we select the table such like customers
and from here we can go into
the choose columns dialog from within the ribbon.
This dialog would let me pick
which columns I would like to keep
and it would delete
or remove all of the other columns from my table.
By default it sorts by natural order
which is the order in which it actually shows up
in the table as you can see.
Now I have this sort by option at the bottom
where I can sort by name
and it changes the order of my columns here
and sorts them alphabetically by column name.
So now they are easier for you to find
and identify
which ones you would like to choose or discard.
The next improvement this month
is improved performance for renaming,
removing and reordering columns.
We've dramatically improved
the performance of these operations.
It used to be such that when you apply the rename
or the remove of a column or reordering columns,
you would actually see those queries refresh
back to the data source to bring the latest data.
But now we've improved that
so that this three operations happen locally
so that there's no latency in getting ready
for applying the next transformation for you,
you don't have to wait after you rename columns
or reorder them or remove columns.
So that makes up for a much more interactive
and user friendly experience for you.
And it will really
and greatly improve the experience
that you get when working with tables
in the query editor.
So we hope you enjoy that
and you will see these capability
for lower latency operations
that are performed locally.
More and more for other operations
over the next few months as well.
So stay tuned for that.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next item on the list is virtualized preview.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So this is kind of the technical name for it.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
What it really means
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
is that actually we've improved
our query editor preview capabilities
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
so that you no longer have any limitations
in the amount of data that can be displayed.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
It used to be that the query editor preview
supported up to something around 3,000 cells.
So it would either cut the number of columns
or it would cut the number of rows
that we display.
Now we've completely changed that implementation
so that we will load
a certain amount of rows and columns
and as you scroll either down
or towards the right of your table,
we will bring in more columns and more rows
so that you will never get to
see this warning telling you that
we couldn't display all of the data.
So it will make much more easier for you
to work with wide tables.
Generally,
the scenarios that you have too many columns,
it happens a lot when you connect
to certain data stores
where you have lots and lots of columns
and the first thing you do is
narrow down the number of columns
but for that you actually like to see them.
So having this feature
in combination with choose columns
that I just showed
and the alphabetical sorting in that dialog
makes up for a much better experience for you
to subset the columns
that you're seeing in your data set.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The next feature this month is visual indicator
for unloaded queries in the query editor.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So as you may already know,
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
with Power BI Desktop
you can decide which queries you would like to use
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
in the report and data views
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
and which queries you would like to not load
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
because they are just intermediate queries
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
and intermediate data
that you actually do not need to use
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
in the report and data views.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
You are just using those queries
as a way to feed into other queries
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
that are the final ones that you load.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So you've always been able
to disable load for these queries
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
but it was not very clearly indicated
when a table was already disabled or not.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
So now we've improved that
with a visual indicator in the queries pane.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
Let's go and take a look.
We're going back to the query editor.
So within here,
I could unload the table by right clicking
and unchecking the enable load option.
It warns me about data loss warning
because I actually already have
this table on the report.
In fact if I do this, I'm gonna break,
but for the sake of showing the feature,
I'll just do it.
So now you can see how tables that are not loaded
actually show up in italics
here in the queries pane.
That's a better indication for you
so that you can see at a glance
which tables are loaded and which ones are not.
I'll bring that back into the original state
so that I don't break my report.
And you can see how it's clearly different,
looks clearly different
when you are looking at a table
that's unloaded versus loaded.
And that's exactly what we wanted to achieve,
so we hope you like that approach.
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
The last feature this month
is one of those 1-click transforms,
[What's New in the Power BI Desktop
February 2016 Update?]
the new one that we've added.
So as you know, we've been incrementally
adding new 1-click transformations,
which basically we have one goal with it,
which is allows you
to perform common transformations
and common tasks much more easily.
Many of these transforms have been possible
to do through either multiple steps
or through actually authoring some formulas,
custom formulas within the query editor.
Now based on your feedback,
we continue adding more of these
1-click transformations every month.
So the one this month is a percentage transform
which would basically allow you
to select a column within the query editor preview
and specify a percentage to apply.
So, for instance,
if you had something like unit price
and you would like to
calculate 10 percent of that,
you're gonna be able to do that just with a UI,
you will not have to
go into the custom column dialog
and create a custom formula
to calculate that percentage.
Let's go and take a look at
how this feature looks.
We're going back into the query editor,
we're gonna go into the order details table.
Or actually, let's go into...
Yeah, let's go into order details.
So here we have the unit price.
And you see it inserted percentage
because I already did it,
then I forgot to remove it before the demo
but if I remove that column
and I select unit price again,
I can go into add column, go under standard
and select the last option, which is percentage.
At that point it will ask me
the value that I should apply as the percentage.
So if I say 10,
it's gonna calculate
the 10 percent of the unit price column.
I click okay, you see now
how it applied so 14, 1.4, 9.8, 0.98
and so on and so forth.
Again, one of those little transforms
that would make things
and it will make your life easier
as you work with the query editor.
We hope that you continue sending us feedback
about transformations
that you would like to see made easier
and use their usual channels,
our user voice,
send a smile, send a frown, the forums
and we'll continue adding these
not just for new transformations
but for any other feature
that you would like to see in Power BI Desktop.
So this is actually the end of the video.
We hope that you enjoyed all of these features.
As I pointed out earlier,
this is a really, really hot release
with lots of new capabilities.
We hope you enjoyed,
we hope you continue sending us feedback,
you continue using Power BI Desktop every day
and together we'll make Power BI Desktop better
going forward.
So please stay tuned for future updates
and stay in touch.
Thank you.