Power BI Weekly

We have received the Power BI July 2026 Feature Summary. The highlights for me are the TMDL view on the web, conditional formatting finally extending to line charts and legends, and a small but welcome addition to let you write measure descriptions via triple-slash comments right where you define the measure. Organisational apps also gain GA support for audiences, so different user groups can get tailored views of the same app. Something operational worth flagging: if you're on a Power BI Desktop build from March 2026 or earlier, you'll lose the ability to save and share files to OneDrive and SharePoint from October. Make sure you update to keep saving to OneDrive/SharePoint!

Elsewhere this week, Chris Webb has written about why DAX UDFs matter more now that M365 Copilot queries semantic models directly rather than building Power BI visuals. Wrapping measure logic in a well-documented UDF, and telling Copilot in the metadata to always use it, is a neat way of keeping some governance and predictability over LLM results.

On the governance and security side, Meagan Longoria has a timely warning about Fabric's inbound network protection settings. Flipping on Private Link or Block Public Internet Access quietly breaks a number of things (on-premises gateways, mirroring for older SQL Server versions, Purview scanning, Copilot, even PDF exports in some cases) which aren't particularly well documented. Make sure you read Meagan's blog if you're considering enabling this feature!

On a separate note, Jason Cockington has a nice piece on the hidden cost of VertiPaq scans, showing how two DAX measures that return identical results can have very different Storage Engine footprints. Finally, John Kerski has published a reflective piece on five years of bringing DataOps to Power BI and Fabric. Worth a read if you're thinking about how DataOps practices should evolve as more of your estate moves into Fabric.