The 24th of July, 2017 is the second birthday for Power BI. I thought I would take the occasion of its second birthday to reflect on all the great work that the crack Power BI team at Microsoft has done over the last year. I think it would be a tough job working in a large software company, trying to deliver great new features while not breaking any legacy capabilities. We all have 20:20 vision with hindsight, but we must remember that Microsoft makes design decisions before we all get the benefit of hindsight. I just seriously want to say a big THANKS to the Power BI team for such an outstanding product. Please keep going – we are all depending on you for ongoing and continuous improvement.
Below is a list of all the major features delivered as part of Power BI desktop over the year. I haven’t listed all the great work that has been done completely on the service side (or mobile for that matter). Thanks to those teams as well.
Here is what has been delivered by the Desktop team (thanks to Ramana for collating this list for me).
Query Editing
| Feature | Release |
|---|---|
| New transform – Convert Table Column to a list | September 2016 |
| New transform – Extract values from a nested list | January 2017 |
| New transform – Extract text before/after/between delimiters | May 2017 |
| New transform – Unpivot only selected columns | May 2017 |
| Query Editor ribbon support for scalar values – new Contextual Ribbon tabs that expose common transformations for Text; Date/Time and Number values. | September 2016 |
| Option to Merge/Append as New Query | August 2016 |
| Query Dependencies view | September 2016 |
| Added Maximize and Restore buttons in Navigator and Query Dependencies | November 2016 |
| Add Column from Examples | April 2017 |
| Add Column from Examples enhancements – provision of Suggestions and support for additional transformations including many Date/Time operations. | June 2017 |
| Add Column from Examples enhancements – support for additional transformations | June 2017 |
| Add Column from Examples enhancements – support for a few additional Number and Date/Time/Timezone data transformations | July 2017 |
| Quickly change a column’s data type and locale with the new Using locale option in the Column headers type menu | February 2017 |
| Support for percentage data type | November 2016 |
| Expand & Aggregate columns – support for Load More values | September 2016 |
| Add Column – Invoke Custom Function | September 2016 |
| Invoke Function dialog – support for table parameters (holds both for built-in and custom functions). You can select an existing table query as the input value to the function. | October 2016 |
| Improved function authoring experience – When a function is created using Convert to Function on a query modifying the query steps will automatically modify the function code. | November 2016 |
| Split column by delimiter – automatic detection of delimiter character | March 2017 |
| Split column (by delimiter/number of characters) into rows | April 2017 |
| Group by: basic mode | April 2017 |
| Go to column | April 2017 |
| Easily insert steps into existing queries using the new Insert Step After option | February 2017 |
| Show Errors experience | September 2016 |
| Keyboarding – support for smart typing in drop-down menus | September 2016 |
Report View
| Feature | Release |
|---|---|
| Predefined matrix styles (similar to table formatting in Excel) | August 2016 |
| Table and matrix column formatting | November 2016 |
| Matrix conditional formatting | November 2016 |
| Table and matrix conditional formatting improvement – blank formatting | January 2017 |
| Table header word wrap | January 2017 |
| Matrix row headers word wrap | February 2017 |
| More URL support in table and matrix visuals | May 2017 |
| New matrix visual (Preview) | March 2017 |
| New matrix visual enhancements (Preview):</br>column sorting</br>column resizing</br>word wrap | April 2017 |
| New table visual (Preview) | May 2017 |
| Data bars for new table and matrix visuals (Preview) | June 2017 |
| New table & matrix visuals – general availability | July 2017 |
| Drill-down / drill-up on line charts | August 2016 |
| Line chart – line thickness and join type controls | February 2017 |
| High density line sampling | June 2017 |
| Continuous axis for the Date axis | August 2016 |
| Improved date axis range formatting | October 2016 |
| Hierarchical axis | November 2016 |
| Axis label and title color control | November 2016 |
| X- and Y-axis font size control | February 2017 |
| Rename axis titles | April 2017 |
| Reorder fields in charts and tooltips | August 2016 |
| Renaming fields in visuals | July 2017 |
| Inline Hierarchies – general availability | August 2016 |
| Updated drill experience – ability to use both inline hierarchy and older drill experience in the same visual. | September 2016 |
| Phone report layout (Preview) | September 2016 |
| Phone reports scrolling | November 2016 |
| Phone reports general availability | January 2017 |
| Date slicer | October 2016 |
| Dropdown slicer | November 2016 |
| Numeric range slicer (Preview) | March 2017 |
| Relative date slicer (Preview) | May 2017 |
| Horizontal image slicer | June 2017 |
| Combo chart formatting updates – Shade area of the line | June 2017 |
| Markers on line; area; and combo visuals (Preview) | June 2017 |
| Data label improvements – data label capabilities to column; bar; and waterfall charts – orientation; position and density. | October 2016 |
| Data labels on pie and doughnut visuals – percent of total | March 2017 |
| Combo chart data label enhancements | May 2017 |
| Bing maps – two new formatting options – ability to set bubble size and set the zoom level and stick to it. | October 2016 |
| Bing maps improvements – Map themes and improved geo-hierarchy experience | June 2017 |
| ArcGIS Maps for Power BI (Preview) | September 2016 |
| Textbox – ability to choose font color | March 2017 |
| mailto links in textbox | May 2017 |
| Visual font family setting | June 2017 |
| Combo chart formatting updates – Force zeros to align between the two axes | June 2017 |
| Colour formatting for KPI visual | August 2016 |
| Report gridlines and snap to grid (Preview) | October 2016 |
| New aggregations for string and DateTime columns | January 2017 |
| Cartesian chart minimum category width | February 2017 |
| Report theming (Preview) | March 2017 |
| Accessible reports | June 2017 |
| Relative date filters | July 2017 |
| Cross-highlight using multiple series | March 2017 |
| Responsive layout for visuals (preview) | July 2017 |
| New waterfall chart option – breakdown | July 2017 |
| Custom visuals store integration | July 2017 |
| Custom visual updates – Drilldown Choropleth | July 2017 |
| Custom visual updates – Drilldown Cartogram | July 2017 |
| Custom visual updates – Drilldown Player | July 2017 |
| Custom visual updates – Certified custom visuals | July 2017 |
Analytics
| Feature | Release |
|---|---|
| Analytics pane (**New**) – the new central location for all analytical features. You can find this pane next to the formatting pane when you have a visual selected. | August 2016 |
| Dynamic reference lines – added ability to create multiple data bound reference lines on clustered column and bar charts; line charts; and scatter charts. These new reference lines are calculated based on the max; min; median; average; or different percentiles of a selected measure. | August 2016 |
| Forecasting (Preview) – new forecasting feature on your line chart to do predictive analytics on your data. | September 2016 |
| Forecasting – general availability. | November 2016 |
| Use your own R IDE – When editing your R visual you can select the pop out icon to open the default application for .R files on your computer. | September 2016 |
| Grouping – the ability to group up points on your visual to help you more easily explore and analyze related categories. | October 2016 |
| Groups on the ribbon – You can create and edit groups from the Modelling tab or from the Data / Drill tab when you are on a chart. | November 2016 |
| Binning – you can also now use binning on numerical and time fields. | October 2016 |
| Bin by count – recommended number or size of bins. | May 2017 |
| Top-N filter – a new filter type to filter by the Top or Bottom number of categories sorted by a specific measure. | October 2016 |
| Include/exclude data points – useful to focus on a specific set of points – Include will filter out all points except for those you’ve chosen to include. Exclude will filter out the points you’ve chosen to exclude. | October 2016 |
| R-powered custom visuals – you can simply download a pre-built R-powered custom visual from the custom visual’s gallery instead of having to build it yourself. | October 2016 |
| Clustering (preview) – Clustering lets you quickly find groups of similar data points in a subset of your data. | November 2016 |
| Clustering – general availability | March 2017 |
| Two new Quick Calcs in Matrix visual: Percent of row total and percent of column total | February 2017 |
| Quick measures (Preview) – lets you quickly create new measures based on measures and numerical columns in your table. | April 2017 |
| Two new quick measures (Preview): Total for category & Rolling average. | May 2017 |
| General improvements to the quick measures feature – </br>how blanks should be treated</br>quick measures match the formatting of the base measure if the chosen measure doesn’t need a specific formatting. | May 2017 |
| Quick measures from the community – Star rating | July 2017 |
| Quick measures from the community – Concatenated list of values | July 2017 |
| Show value as (Preview) – a quick way to change the way your values appear in a chart or table. | April 2017 |
| Q&A in Spanish (Preview) | April 2017 |
| Report level measures for live connections to Analysis Services tabular models and Power BI service datasets | May 2017 |
| Bidirectional cross filtering for DirectQuery – general availability | July 2017 |
Data Connectivity
| Feature | Release |
|---|---|
| Snowflake data connector (Preview) | August 2016 |
| Snowflake data connector – DirectQuery support | September 2016 |
| Snowflake data connector – general availability | July 2017 |
| ProjectPlace connector (**New**) | September 2016 |
| Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Financials (Beta) (**New**) | October 2016 |
| Dynamics 365 for Customer Insights (**New**) | May 2017 |
| OLE DB (**New**) | October 2016 |
| ODBC and OLE DB connectors – support for Select related tables | February 2017 |
| Mixpanel (**New**) | October 2016 |
| Spark DirectQuery (**New**) | November 2016 |
| PowerApps Common Data Service connector (**New**) | February 2017 |
| Azure Analysis Services (Preview) | November 2016 |
| Azure Analysis Services database (Beta) (**New**) | March 2017 |
| Azure Data Lake Store general availability | March 2017 |
| Impala connector – DirectQuery support | August 2016 |
| Impala connector general availability | June 2017 |
| Web connector – Web page previews | August 2016 |
| Web connector – support for specifying HTTP request headers within the dialog | September 2016 |
| Web connector – improvements to the refresh of cloud based data sources – new datasets that leverage import from Web pages won’t be automatically configured for refresh in Power BI on the web and will require the use of a gateway such as the Personal Gateway or On-Premises data gateway | November 2016 |
| SAP Business Warehouse connector general availability | August 2016 |
| SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA connectors – enhancements to parameter input interface | September 2016 |
| SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA connectors – enhancements to parameter input experience | April 2017 |
| SAP Business Warehouse connector – DirectQuery support | June 2017 |
| Oracle connector – improved Navigator previews performance | September 2016 |
| OData connector – support for Select Related Tables option | September 2016 |
| OData connector – folding of expand record operations | November 2016 |
| Folder connector – combine binaries – combine all binaries within a folder as long as they have a homogeneous file type and structure. You can also easily apply additional transformation/extraction steps by modifying the exemplar query without having to worry about any additional function invocation steps as they’re automatically generated for you. | November 2016 |
| Folder connector – support for combining binaries from the Preview dialog with the options Combine; Combine & Load (bypassing the Query Editor) | February 2017 |
| Combine binaries – ability to specify a sample file to use | March 2017 |
| Combine files – ability to reference First File as example | May 2017 |
| Text/CSV connector – unified Text and CSV connectors into a single connector | February 2017 |
| Visual Studio Team Services connector (Beta) | January 2017 |
| SQL Server connector – support for SQL Failover option | January 2017 |
| Redshift Connector: beta support and Publish to Power BI service | April 2017 |
| Amazon Redshift connector general availability | June 2017 |
| DB2 connector – option to specify package collection | March 2017 |
| Connect to datasets in the Power BI service (Preview) | April 2017 |
| Custom Data Connectors support | June 2017 |
| Power BI service Live Connect to On-premises and Push streaming datasets | June 2017 |
| IBM Netezza connector (beta) | June 2017 |
General
| Feature | Release |
|---|---|
| Auto-recover Desktop files | August 2016 |
| In-product links to the Power BI Community | September 2016 |
| Diagnostics information in the About dialog | October 2016 |
| Solutions Templates and Partner Showcase quick access | February 2017 |
Matt,
For SAP BW I think you should include a mention of the October 2017 update “Support for additional member properties”. Up until then it was a pain to mirror a SAP BW report in Power BI.
Good job though and an eye opener for the pace of development.
Thanks Matt. This is a great reference. I was actually thinking of doing this a couple of weeks back as it hard to keep track of all the great features released.
Hi Matt! Thanks for the great summary list. I am looking forward to see an article from you on Custom Data Connector. Especially how to ‘get data’ from a password protected website. Thanks in advance.
That sounds like a job for Chris Webb. Check out his blog https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/