Power BI Features Reporting

Matt here.  The blog article this week was written by Neville de Sousa.  Neville shared with me a Power BI report that shows all the Power BI features released since July 2015.  Neville will explain the background and his report.

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Neville:  Keeping track of Power BI Desktop’s amazing features since it went GA is difficult, especially given the monthly release cycle.  I wanted a single reference – a Power BI Desktop Information Catalogue, so to speak.

This desire resulted in a personal project that was inspired by Matt’s post Happy Second Birthday Power BI. Matt’s post gave me the idea of creating a Power BI report as a reference for itself – the Desktop portion.

I designed this report to allow a user to easily access:

• features over time;
• feature count by category;
• release count by day in week and month;
• browse features by category;
• read summary notes;
• search features and read their description;
• access monthly release sites;
• find the YouTube videos.

Here is the report for you to use.  The report is shared using the Power BI Publish to Web feature (follow the link to Matt’s blog about that topic).

You can view the report in your web browser here.

How the Report is Compiled and Maintained

Collating this information was time consuming. As Power BI has evolved, so have its release notes and feature categorisation. This meant web scraping became too difficult. I resolved to old fashioned Copy & Paste with the information stored in Excel. I have standardised categories, using current ones as a basis. For instance, Data Visualisation was barely used as a category, but similar features are also grouped under Reporting. Custom Visuals are accounted for but are not part of the feature count. I will continue to update the report with each new release.

Using the Report

The visuals are simple, yet informative. The feature count is impressive and the cumulative number clearly illustrates areas of major development. I have counted each sub-feature grouped under a master feature as one. This is because, from a development perspective, effort is required for each sub-feature. Other report features include: tooltips and drill through to provide a quick feature glance and drill through to the detail; Smart Filter by OKViz to search features in the Detail tab; and the Narrative Science custom visual to a quick automated analysis.

Wrap Up

I hope you find benefit with and enjoy this report.  You may like to book mark this blog article so you can find the report when you need it. In many ways, this is a celebration of the fantastic work by the Power BI team. I started my Power BI “journey” a deep sceptic, but I’m happy to say that I’ve converted and a massive fan ?.

Finally, a massive thanks to Matt for his post and providing me with feedback and hosting this report.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nrdesousa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nrdesousa