Power BI Weekly

Issue #239 - 2nd January 2024

Welcome to the 239th edition of Power BI Weekly, and the first of 2024! In this newsletter we're covering all content since the last edition, so don't worry - there are no gaps in our timeline. We've had a couple of small announcements that crept in shortly after the last newsletter. The first of which is the new Custom messaging for Power BI App Access Requests, which allows you to add additional information such as why a user may not currently have the correct access, and/or the steps they need to go through to receive access. The second announcement is that the DAX query view has introduced new INFO DAX functions, exposing the underlying TMSCHEMA DMVs as DAX functions. This, in my humble opinion, is a HUGE win for report documentation. No longer do you need to enter the depths of your XMLA endpoint to retrieve information about expression definitions, descriptions etc - it's all at your fingertips with a bit of DAX code. And no duplication necessary - coupled with visuals such as the new and improved smart-narrative text box, more bits of information can be data driven, rather than living in duplicated static text on your report page!

A bit of additional HUGE news came out of a live stream Reid did with Jeffrey Wang a few days ago. While discussing DAX Query Best Practices and Historical Context, Jeffrey mentioned that we'll soon be able to use the SUMMARIZECOLUMNS function within DAX measures, a limitation which I'm sure many of you, like me, will have come across since Power BI's inception. The barriers to using the powerful and intuitive table function (that's used almost ubiquitously behind-the-scenes in Power BI) will be removed, and I can't wait. Great news to start 2024 (even if it's not quite available yet!)