Power BI Weekly
Issue #351 - 31st March 2026
A handful of official blogs this week. On the Fabric side (but relevant to Power BI) is the release of Fabric CLI v1.5, including full support for all Power BI REST API operations (and a couple of new capabilities thrown in too!) We've also had a deep-dive article describing how to Chat with Copilot inside a report on the Power BI mobile app (Preview) (announced at FabCon), and we've had an article around Dataflows: Thank you for eight years of Gen1—and why Gen2 is the future, suggesting that a retirement date for Gen1 is imminent, but they will be supported for the "foreseeable future".
Outside of Microsoft this week, Marco Russo has succinctly described the differences between DAX user-defined functions (UDF) vs. calculation groups, Tharun Kumar Ravikrindhi has told us to Stop Writing Format Strings for Every Measure | Use This One DAX UDF Function Instead, and Dániel Patkós has continued his series on Power BI CI/CD in GitHub Actions with the article: Making BPA Results Actionable with Automated PR Comments, a great way to enforce quality gates proactively in a discoverable manner!
🛠️ Data Prep
- On the Power BI blog, Miguel Llopis (@mllopis) shares Dataflows: Thank you for eight years of Gen1—and why Gen2 is the future
- Chandeep Chhabra (@chandeep2786) explains how to Solve Tough Data Problems Beyond Star Schema
- On the Select Distinct blog, Elle Harrison describes how to Export Outlook Mailbox to Excel via Power Query
🧩 Data Modeling
- On the SQLBI blog, Marco Russo (@marcorus) describes DAX user-defined functions (UDF) vs. calculation groups
- On the Power BI community blog, Tharun Kumar Ravikrindhi writes Stop Writing Format Strings for Every Measure | Use This One DAX UDF Function Instead
- Reid Havens (@HavensBI) discusses Power BI Report-Scoped Measures: 6 Patterns for Better Reports
📊 Report Authoring and Interactivity
- Valerie Junk (@porcubi) explains how to Create a Line Chart with a target band in Power BI and small multiples
- Bas Dohmen (@HowToPowerBI) describes How Senior Power BI Developers Annotate Their Bar Charts
🚀 Deployment, Security and Operations
- On the Fabric blog, Hasan Abo Shally highlights that the Fabric CLI v1.5 is here (Generally Available)
- Dániel Gábor Patkós writes about Making BPA Results Actionable with Automated PR Comments
- On the Power BI Tips YouTube channel, Mike Carlo and Tommy Puglia (@PowerBITips) present a few episodes: Git Best Practices Diff Noise & Naming - Ep. 513, Help How Do We CI/CD - Ep. 514 - Power BI tips and Subscriptions as a Silent Hero - Ep. 516 - Power BI tips
- Gilbert Quevauvilliers (@GilbertQue) describes Setting up Power BI Version Control with Azure DevOps
- On the Power BI community blog, Anton Solomonov explains How to Trigger a Report Refresh Programmatically in Power BI Report Server
- On the Fabric blog, Leo Li shares the On-premises data gateway February 2026 release and the On-premises data gateway March 2026 release
- Nico Botes writes about Microsoft On-Premises Data Gateway Administration
🌐 General
- On the Power BI blog, Efrat Mininberg announces Chat with Copilot inside a report on the Power BI mobile app (Preview)