Power BI Weekly

Issue #334 - 18th November 2025

Over the last week we've had quite a few official blogs, including the November 2025 Feature Summary, which now seems to be written (or at least posted) by Adam instead of Patrick. So that's new. Anyway, this month my favourite/the important updates are the Enhancements to Image visuals (including additional styling, state customization, and other formatting options), the Power BI Modeling MCP Server (Preview) which is contextualized in Mohammad's higher-level article Bringing Context Aware Intelligence to Power BI (which allows you to make changes to semantic models using natural language), and the deprecation of R and Python visuals in Embed for your customers solution (to be unsupported as of May 2026).

Other announcements this week include the fact that PBIR will become the default Power BI Report Format – Get Ready for the Transition. Interestingly, this doesn't mean that the `.pbix` file extension is going - rather that the internal structure of a PBIX will be the new PBIR format for all files going forward. On the Fabric side, there was an article about the Decoupling Default Semantic Models for Existing Items in Microsoft Fabric which started a few weeks ago. The models remain, it's just now easier to work on them independently from the underlying lakehouse/warehouse and delete them if desired!

Elsewhere this week, Gilbert Quevauvilliers has tested out Justin Martin's Power BI MCP Tuner Server (mentioned in the editorial of Issue 331) wondering Does it reduce capacity requirements?, Phil Seamark has written an interesting tidbit around The Impact of Primary Keys on DAX Query Performance in Power BI, and Reid Havens has spoken about the new Calendar features and functions in his video Speed Up Your Power BI Time Intelligence - with this Simple [DAX] Change.