Power BI Weekly
Issue 372
25th August 2026
Katie Murray has published the Power BI August 2026 Feature Summary, which (to me) seems like one of the best ones we've seen this year. My favourites:
- Donut chart centre values: donut charts can now show a value (the total, or a custom measure) right in the centre, with no overlaid card needed, and it stays in sync with filtering, cross-highlighting, and drill-down.
- OneLake URLs for images: images stored in OneLake can now be used as image sources across the image visual, table and matrix cells, cards, and slicers, with Power BI authenticating on the viewer's behalf.
- Data refresh enhancements in the web: Power BI Service now lets you choose between refreshing schema and data together, syncing schema only, or refreshing data only, rather than always doing both.
- Changing table storage mode from Direct Lake to Import: individual tables in a Direct Lake on OneLake model can now be converted to Import mode directly in web modelling, making it easier to build composite (mixed mode) semantic models.
- Direct Lake calculated columns: Direct Lake on OneLake models can now use DAX-based calculated columns without changing storage mode, useful for things like age calculations, concatenated fields, or multilingual labels.
Quite a few more updates in there, so definitely take a look.
Also from the team, Eran Benayun has announced the Dataflows Upgrade Wizard (Preview), which walks Dataflows Gen1 owners through migrating to Fabric Dataflows Gen2 (CI/CD) at their own pace while preserving key properties.
Elsewhere this week, Marco Russo has shown how AI can help test DAX measures, using an assistant to generate filter contexts that catch incorrect inclusions or exclusions in complex business logic. And sticking with the DAX theme, James Broome has explained how to provide comparative context under Row Level Security using DAX calculated tables that pre-aggregate data at refresh time, so restricted users get meaningful benchmarks without seeing anyone else's detail.
On the tooling side, Darren Gosbell has released DAX Studio v3.6.0, headlined by a new Delta Analyzer preview tool that surfaces Delta table metadata behind Direct Lake models to help diagnose performance issues. Finally, James Serra has laid out a practical framework for when Fabric capacity runs out, walking through when to optimise, scale up, scale out, or isolate a problem workload.
Data Prep
- Upgrade Power BI Dataflows Gen1 to Fabric Dataflows Gen2 with the Upgrade Wizard (Preview) The new Dataflows Upgrade Wizard simplifies transitioning Power BI Dataflows Gen1 to Fabric Dataflows Gen2 (CI/CD), preserving key properties and guiding owners through modernization at their own pace.
Data Modeling
- Direct Lake Calculated Columns (Preview) Direct Lake on OneLake previews calculated columns using DAX in semantic models without changing storage modes or pipelines, enabling applications such as age calculations, concatenated fields, formatted dates, multilingual reports, and personalized content.
- Testing DAX measures by using AI AI assistants automate regression testing for DAX measures by generating filter contexts that identify incorrect inclusions and exclusions across complex business logic.
- Providing comparative context with DAX Calculated Tables under Row Level Security This article explains how DAX calculated tables provide comparative context under row level security by pre-aggregating data at refresh time, enabling restricted users to view meaningful benchmarks without exposing sensitive information.
- Modern DAX in Power BI: UDFs, Window Functions, INFO & More (Part 4) This video series explores recent DAX enhancements in Power BI, covering user-defined functions for code reuse, new window functions for advanced calculations, INFO functions for metadata queries, and debugging tools.
- Power BI with MCP Server - AI Data Modeling and DAX - Visual Studio Code - GitHub Copilot Chat Discover how MCP Server integrates AI with Power BI to enhance data modeling using DAX, while Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot Chat streamline formula creation and optimization.
Report Authoring and Interactivity
- Hack the NEW Power BI Doughnut Chart in Under 10 Minutes The video demonstrates how to customize and "hack" Power BI’s new doughnut chart using custom visuals and Project Files, providing a quick 10-minute guide with a downloadable demo file.
- Power BI Donut Chart Center Value: 6 Ways to Set It Up The August 2026 Power BI update adds native center value settings to donut charts, enabling live numbers, measures, conditional formatting, images, and six labeling options, with automation via PBIR JSON.
- Speed Up Power BI Report Development: 5 Jobs to Automate Automate Power BI tasks such as measure renaming, visual alignment, bookmark creation, button state management, and pop-up filter panels to save time and maintain consistency.
- Line Up All Data Labels in Power BI - The Power BI Label Trick Learn a quick Power BI trick to neatly stack data and detail labels in bar charts, eliminating the common issue of scattered labels.
- Power BI Legend Sorting: Sort by Value While Keeping a Series in Place (Taglish) Learn how to dynamically sort Power BI legend items by measure value while fixing specific series positions using a DAX workaround.
- SVG Rendering Cost in Power BI Power BI’s new analysis reveals that SVG rendering cost is primarily driven by image complexity and data refresh frequency, impacting dashboard responsiveness.
- Claude Code to Built My Power BI Report! | No Code - No Clicks - Just Claude + Power BI - Prompts! This video shows how Claude AI automates Power BI reporting, saving time and boosting analyst productivity.
- How to Hide Header Icons in Power BI Reports This tutorial shows how to remove header icons from various Power BI visuals in both Desktop and the Service, improving report aesthetics for users on PowerBI.com.
- Master Power BI Slicers: List Slicer Tutorial | Part 1 Power BI List Slicers enable interactive filtering through single or multi-select modes, improving dashboard usability with custom icons and visual elements.
- Master Power BI Slicers | Date Slicer Tutorial | Part 2 Power BI date slicers offer various filtering modes, including relative date ranges and dropdowns, to improve report interactivity for time-based datasets.
- How Accessibility Makes Power BI Usable When Everything Else Gets in the Way Accessibility in Power BI improves usability for everyone by meeting WCAG colour contrast standards and reducing cognitive load with clear designs.
Deployment, Security and Operations
- Are You Missing These 4 Microsoft Fabric Governance Tips? Discover four essential Microsoft Fabric governance tips: make semantic models discoverable, apply domain-level sensitivity labels, leverage OneLake catalog recommendations for compliance, and simplify workspace access management to enhance data trustworthiness and efficiency.
- Fabric-CICD Updates - Semantic Models, Parameters and Config Fabric-CICD’s latest update introduces semantic model binding and enhanced YAML configuration for more precise CI/CD workflows.
- Tools With Interactive UIs In Fabric Notebooks With Semantic Link Labs Semantic Link Labs added an interactive UI to Fabric notebooks allowing users to visualize report and semantic model lineage easily without much coding.
- v3.6.0 Release Version 3.6.0 introduces Delta Analyzer, a preview tool that provides detailed metadata insights for Direct Lake tables to help diagnose performance issues more effectively.
- 10 Things I Hate About Fabric Deployment Pipelines— And Some Alternatives Fabric deployment pipelines in August 2026 have unclear permission management requiring separate roles for access and deployment with rules set post-deployment and a difficult-to-find UI.
- When Your Microsoft Fabric Capacity Runs Out: Optimize, Scale Up, Scale Out, or Isolate? When your Azure Fabric capacity runs out, assess whether optimization, scaling up, scaling out, or isolating problematic workloads is needed based on usage patterns and resource consumption.
- PBI Desktop Bridge Tips - Ep.556 - Power BI tips Power BI Desktop Bridge operates as a local JSON-RPC server, enabling agents to reload files and capture screenshots without restarting the application.
General
- Power BI August 2026 Feature Summary Power BI August 2026 introduces numerous enhancements across reporting, modeling, data connectivity, mobile, embedded analytics, and developer experiences, featuring modern visual defaults, a new date picker for slicers, Center value support for donut charts, and improved Azure map features.
- The AI Semantic Layer You Probably Already Have Power BI's existing semantic models provide an invisible foundation for AI applications, grounding them in accurate business definitions and ensuring trustworthy insights without needing new model development.
- Build a Power BI Dashboard with AI Fabric Skills + Claude No DAX This video demonstrates how to create a complete Power BI sales dashboard using AI Fabric Skills and Claude, eliminating the need for DAX by guiding three strategic prompts throughout the process.
- How to Build a Clean Balance Sheet in Power BI This guide shows how to transform raw Xero accounting data into a polished Power BI Balance Sheet by structuring data, setting up financial hierarchies, and applying consistent formatting, complementing last week's Profit & Loss building instructions.
- Power BI Accounts Receivable Dashboard Guide The guide walks through integrating Xero’s Aged Receivables Summary into Power BI to create actionable dashboards that show who owes money, how late payments are, and the necessary follow-up actions.
- Perseids 2026: From Meteor Data to Power BI and GitHub The article details the creation of a Power BI dashboard visualizing Perseids meteor data from the Global Meteor Network, complete with custom queries, a star chart of Perseus, and a geographic map of meteor brightness, all available on GitHub.
- Build a Cohort Analysis Dashboard in Power BI | Step-by-Step This guide walks through creating a Cohort Analysis Dashboard in Power BI, detailing the logic for tracking customer retention and churn over time using DAX.