Power BI Weekly
Issue #308 - 20th May 2025
Welcome to the 308th edition of Power BI Weekly! Sorry it's a bit late, but it's a bigger one than usual, what with Microsoft Build this week. If you're interested in all the announcements across Microsoft's services, check out the Book of news which has a big old article describing all the main announcements and developments. Naturally, there's been plenty of announcements in the Power BI and Fabric offerings too. Those announcements relating to Power BI are as follows:
- Translytical task flows (Preview) - the feature that was teased last year at Ignite. The native ability to "write-back" (and much more) in Power BI.
- The next era of Copilot in Power BI: Chat with your Data (Preview) - new dedicated Copilot experience in the Power BI/Fabric interface (yes, you needed another one). See also: Extracting deeper insights with Fabric Data Agents in Copilot in Power BI
- Updates to Fabric Copilot Capacity - now available to F2 capacities and above, and a new admin setting being switched "on" by default.
And on the topic of Copilot, Jeffrey Wang has written a fascinating article about LLMs and DAX: Where Things Stand Today after last week's article highlighting the improvement of Copilot's DAX capabilities. The whole article's worth a read, but Jeffrey's ever-wise words stand-out at the end: "...remember that the smartest move you can make is the same one Power BI experts have always preached: invest in a clean, well-structured semantic model."
Now, moving on. We've also received the Power BI May 2025 Feature Summary this week! The main thing they've drawn our attention to is the new Power BI section of the Fabric Roadmap (preview), which gives us a clear view as to what features are being worked on behind the scenes (across all of Fabric, not just Power BI). There are also a bunch more Copilot & AI updates, including a new "Prep data for AI" experience in Power BI Desktop that you may have seen appear over the last few days. Other announcements this month include Persisted sorting for field parameters (Preview), and a Deep dive into selection expressions for calculation groups, given you further control about how Calc Groups behave when multiple items are selected, or no item is selected.
Finally this week, I wanted to highlight a number of new endjin blogs. First of all, a couple of blog posts from my brilliant colleague Paul, who wrote a blog taking us through How to Build Mobile Navigation in Power BI, and also provided a A Creative Walkthrough of our Titanic Power BI Report, a brilliant demonstration how some professional design thinking can level up your reports. For those bridging into Data Engineering (especially on Fabric), my colleague Carmel has written a trio of blog posts touching on some of the modern foundations, with the articles: What is a Data Lakehouse?, How do Data Lakehouses Work? An Intro to Delta Lake and What is the Medallion Architecture? Finally, my (ex) colleague Liam has now moved on to pastures new, but not without writing the article Retrospecting on my career at endjin. If you're interested in learning more about what a role at endjin looks like, please take a read of Liam's blog. We wish him all the best!
🛠️ Data Prep
- Marco Russo (@marcorus) writes about Direct Lake vs Import vs Direct Lake+Import | Fabric semantic models (May 2025)
- Antriksh Sharma (@AntrikshShar) describes how to CROSS JOIN 2 or more columns in Power Query
- On the Power BI community blog, John Basha blogs about Automating Daily Treasury Interest Rates in Power BI Using Power Query
- Zoe Douglas (@MSPowerBI) discusses Mix, Match, Import - Direct Lake Simplified
- Rick de Groot (@Rickmaurinus) describes Converting HEX to RGB Values in Power Query M and describes how to Convert RGB to HEX in Power Query M
🧩 Data Modeling
- Jeffrey Wang (@jwang_pbi) writes about LLMs and DAX: Where Things Stand Today
- On the Power BI blog, Jeroen ter Heerdt (@jeroenterheerdt) covers Deep dive into selection expressions for calculation groups
- On the SQLBI blog, Alberto Ferrari (@FerrariAlberto) discusses Understanding the “can’t determine relationship between the fields” error in Power BI
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) describes How to Customize Totals Row in Power BI
- Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah16) shares: Grouping in Power BI Explained | Episode 05 | Power BI Beginner Tutorial Series, Date Table in Power BI | Power BI Beginner Series | Episode 07 and Power BI Hierarchies Explained | Drill Down, Custom Hierarchies & Matrix Visuals | Episode 08
- On the Power BI community blog, Anmol Malviya writes: How to Create a Measure Table in Power BI – Best Practices for Clean & Organized Reports, Bulk Move Measures into Folders Using TMDL View in Power BI, Exploring the TMDL View in Power BI Desktop – The 5th View You Need to Know and Create Calendar Table in One Click using TMDL View in Power BI
- On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) writes: Power BI Totals: How to Fix Incorrect Summary Values with DAX, Power BI Total Fix: How to Correct Incorrect Totals with DAX, Power BI RANKX vs TOPN: Rank Data Dynamically and Power BI Hierarchies: Build Interactive Reports Easily
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) describes Performance Analyzer in Power BI
- Parul Sagar (@parulsagar) describes How to Calculate % Change with Relative Date Slicer in Power BI
📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity
- On the Power BI blog, Sujata Narayana announces Translytical task flows (Preview)
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) describes the Performance Implications Of Different Ways Of Fully Expanding A Power BI Matrix Visual
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) talks about Profit and Loss Statement in Power BI - P&L - Financial Reporting
- On the endjin blog, Paul Waller (@Crashbangwaller) blogs about Learning from Disaster - A Creative Walkthrough of the Titanic Power BI Report and describes How to Build Mobile Navigation in Power BI
- Dhruvin Shah (@DhruvinShah16) discusses Filters in Power BI | Visual, Page & Report Level + Slicer vs Filter | Episode 06
- On the Power BI community blog, Anmol Malviya describes How to Show Multiple Slicer Selections in a Card or Text Box in Power BI and describes How to Keep Layering of Visuals in Power BI Desktop
- On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) blogs about Power BI Info Panel: Add Interactive Overlays with PowerPoint
- Vahid Doustimajd (@VahidDoustiM) presents پیدا و هایلایت کردن داینامیک بیشترین و کمترین مقدار در Power BI [Persian]
- Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) describes Power BI Org Chart: Impress HR in 10 Minutes and tells us to Steal This Power BI Date Picker Design (It Just Works)
- On the Excel Basement YouTube channel, Rahim Zulfiqar Ali (@rahimzulfiqar) covers Transformation of Reports into Data Storytelling Visuals in Microsoft Excel or Power BI - Zebra BI
🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations
- On the Power BI blog, Amanda Rivera (@MissAmandaN) announces The next era of Copilot in Power BI: Chat with your Data (Preview)
- On the Fabric blog, Amir Jafari (@MSPowerBI) announces Extracting deeper insights with Fabric Data Agents in Copilot in Power BI
- On the Fabric blog, Jonathan Garriss shares Updates to Fabric Copilot Capacity
- On the Power BI community blog, Kushan Narasinghe covers Extract Data from a Power BI Semantic Model Using Python (Locally)
- Gilbert Quevauvilliers (@GilbertQue) describes Using a Python Notebook using Semantic Link Labs to write a DAX Query output to a Lakehouse Table
- Rajendra Ongole (@MSPowerBI) talks about Seamless Deployment Pipelines with Power BI
- On the Data Bear blog, Boniface Muchendu (@DataBearLTD) covers Fabric Data Agents in Power BI: Build Interactive AI with Your Data and describes how to Trace Power BI Report: Debug Performance Using Browser Tools
- Parul Sagar (@parulsagar) describes how to Secure Data Access in Power BI: Hierarchical RLS Made Simple
🌐 General
- On the Power BI blog, Patrick LeBlanc (@GuyInACube) shares the Power BI May 2025 Feature Summary
- On the BIFocal podcast, John White and Jason Himmelstein (@bifocalshow) present Episode 294 - Power BI & Fabric April 2025 Feature Summaries
- The Knee-Deep in Tech team (@KneeDeepinTech) present Podcast episode 307 (News)