Earlier this week Microsoft released the November update for Power BI. In this article, we take a look at some of the new features that came out this month.
As in most previous updates this year, the November update focuses mainly on the reporting and visualization parts.
New icons in the field list
With the new upgrades of the field list and model views, Power BI is unifying the looks across the data, model and report views. The November changes include new icons in the field list, context menu items, drag-and-drop in the model view. Another cool feature is now table card headers showing colors. This can help to quickly see which tables come from the same source.
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Anomaly detection in Power BI
One of the key add-ons is the anomaly detection, which can automatically detect anomalies in the line chart visual. The feature also provides explanations for the detected anomalies to help understand why and how the anomaly had taken place.
After you select the anomaly, Power BI analyzes data for possible explanations. There is a natural-language based explanation provided as well. This is a really powerful feature that makes finding insights in the data a lot faster.
The anomaly detection feature demonstrated below:
Visual Zoom Slicer
The Visual Zoom Slider is another helpful new tool. When applied the zoom slider gives a magnifying glass kind of feature that helps to examine smaller ranges of data. No more trying to change your screen resolutions or leaning closer to the screen to get a better look at the numbers.
Once applied, the zoom state of a visual can be saved and published in the report. This means when other users open the file that you shared, they’ll see whatever you have highlighted and won’t miss an important point. Zoom sliders can be enabled for bar/column, line, line and bar/column combo, and scatter charts.
Lastly, the apply all filters option, which had a preview in May, is now generally available. The feature helps to optimize the filter pane for query reduction by applying all filter changes at once. This feature is quite useful when users want to accept when to apply changes all at once without having to wait.
You may find the full list of all new features from this month’s update via the link.