Power BI Weekly
Issue 373
4th September 2026
Welcome to the 373rd edition of Power BI Weekly! First of all - a bit of a PSA. You may have noticed that I've become quite lax with the "Tuesday publication" precedent (despite best intentions), with Friday being the more common publication day recently. This just fits my week better now, so please expect the newsletter on Fridays going forward, ready for your weekend activities! Enough about me.
There's a "get your connections in order" theme running through this week's official news, starting with the ODBC to ADBC driver transition in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric, which has now reached general availability. If your reports lean on ODBC-based connectors, this is worth validating sooner rather than later. Sticking with connection management, the team has also announced Connection Recency APIs (currently in preview), which let gateway admins track and manage Fabric connections at scale, a useful governance lever for anyone trying to work out which connections are actually still in use before they clean house. Note that this doesn't yet mean tenant admins can manage all cloud connections in the tenant, but that feature is in the works (after a question on that post by yours truly, along with another like-minded individual.)
Elsewhere from the team, the Power BI sample reports have been refreshed with modern visual defaults, updated semantic models and mobile-friendly layouts, a handy reference if you want an up to date example of current best practice rather than the slightly dated defaults the samples had settled into. And on the Fabric <-> Databricks side, there's a new post on modern Power BI architecture choices for reporting on Azure Databricks, benchmarking performance across different storage modes, worth a read if Databricks is your source system and you're weighing up Import against DirectQuery or Direct Lake.
Outside of official content (though coincidentally still written by MSFT employees), Mim is back with a very interesting article digging into what constitutes a well-structured dataset that performs well with the Power BI engine: Writing Parquet That VertiPaq Likes. Finally, Phil Seamark has written up a compilation fix for calculation groups that should speed up query compilation for models with several cross referencing calculation groups, without you needing to change anything yourself.
Data Prep
- Modern Power BI architecture choices for reporting on Azure Databricks: A performance benchmark for Power BI storage modes The benchmark finds Direct Lake on OneLake provides the best overall performance and ease for most data volumes, while a Composite Model with aggregations performs best at extremely large scales for query-resolvable pre-aggregated tables.
- Start validating today: The ODBC to ADBC driver transition in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric (Generally Available) Power BI and Microsoft Fabric are moving from legacy ODBC drivers to Apache Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC) for enhanced performance, security, and better management of large datasets across various connectors.
- Unpivot with Power Query: Transform Wide Data into Tidy Tables Power Query’s Unpivot Columns feature streamlines wide data by merging multiple amount columns into a single tidy column, enhancing analysis with PivotTables and visualizations.
- The Only Power BI Skills That Will Matter | Ft. Rob Collie Rob Collie emphasizes that core Power BI skills such as DAX, Power Query, and semantic modeling will stay valuable despite AI transformations, providing guidance on preparing for an AI-enhanced data professional future.
- Writing Parquet That VertiPaq Likes Understanding how VertiPaq processes Parquet files reveals that using delta-rs for writing produces more efficient parquet with smaller row groups (up to 6 million rows), full dictionary encoding, a global ordering of columns by cardinality, and avoids clustering or Z-ordering techniques.
Data Modeling
- Teach Claude Your Power BI Standards, Custom Skills for the Power BI Modeling MCP Server You can teach Claude and other LLMs your Power BI modeling standards and custom skills using the Power BI Modeling MCP Server, enabling AI to generate reports and semantic models that adhere to your specific guidelines.
- Matrix Totals – The Whiteboard #13 In this episode of The Whiteboard, experts discuss matrix totals using interactive DAX concepts, featuring a special guest from SQLBI.
- AI Can Write DAX. So What Happens to Power BI Developers? Rob Collie explores AI's impact on Power BI development, highlighting semantic models' importance and questioning if classic skills like DAX and data modeling will stay vital for new professionals.
- Power BI calculation groups just got faster to compile Power BI optimized calculation groups to drastically cut formula engine wait time by enhancing multi-item calculation handling, speeding up query compilation without impacting runtime.
- Fabric Data Agent Giving Wrong Answers? Fix It with AI Agent Instructions This video explains why a Fabric Data Agent may provide incorrect answers in M365 Copilot even when the underlying Power BI report shows accurate results, and shows how to fix the issue with proper AI agent instructions.
- Dynamic Data Dictionary with DAX DMVs The article shows how to use DMVs in DAX to automatically generate measure and column descriptions for consistent business glossary visibility across reports.
- Translating Power BI Semantic Models with PowerShell This guide shows how to use PowerShell 7 or Power BI Desktop's XMLA endpoint in Fabric to translate a report's technical metadata like table/column names and measures into various languages without changing the data.
- Is Power BI Dead? Is Microsoft Fabric only a Data Analytics platform? Amit Chandak builds a Microsoft Fabric App with the Rayfin SDK, including a Data Entry Sales app and an attached Power BI semantic model, to explore whether Fabric Apps point toward a future beyond traditional Power BI reporting. He frames it as a discussion rather than a verdict: the goal isn't replacing Power BI, but understanding how Fabric Apps, custom development and semantic models might work alongside it.
- Why Your Power BI AI Answers Are Wrong (And How to Fix It) This video explains why Power BI AI answers can be wrong or slow due to semantic model issues and provides a step-by-step toolkit to fix these problems across all AI surfaces in Power BI.
Report Authoring and Interactivity
- Custom Deneb Parallel Coordinates Chart An interactive parallel coordinates chart in Power BI, allowing users to filter data via drag-and-drop brushes and rearrange axes to uncover hidden correlations.
- Power BI's Most Mysterious Slicer Setting The video reveals a lesser-known hidden setting in Power BI slicers that dramatically improves report interactivity and user experience.
- Using the Center Value Feature in Power BI Donut Charts The August 2026 Power BI update adds a Center Value feature displaying totals inside donut charts, streamlining report design and filter responsiveness.
- PBIR A11y CLI - Run Accessibility Audits for Power BI from your Terminal PBIR A11y CLI automates accessibility audits for Power BI reports checking issues like missing alt text and color contrast with three execution methods remote via npx local cloning with Git or direct download generating a shareable Word report to help developers and consultants meet WCAG standards.
- Power BI sample reports, refreshed with modern visual defaults The refreshed Power BI sample reports now feature modern visuals, enhanced semantics, mobile-friendly designs, and updated authoring tools to improve clarity and effectiveness.
- Nuevos gráficos de anillos en Power BI: valor central nativo (actualización) [Spanish] Learn how to enable and customize Power BI's new donut chart's central value feature, setting default values, formatting labels, units, and filtering responses for clearer insights.
- Power BI Layouts Have Evolved: Download PBIR Files from the Gallery The Power BI Layouts gallery now lets users directly download PBIR files for seamless integration into Power BI Desktop to create professional reports.
- Full Power BI Dashboard - HoMM 3 Unit Selector The Full Power BI Dashboard for Heroes of Might and Magic III features a unit selector UI optimized for data-driven decision making.
- Stop Wasting Hours on Power BI Wireframes | Claude AI Does It In Just 2 Minutes! 🤯 Pankaj Namekar demonstrates prompting Claude AI to generate Power BI dashboard wireframes, turning the AI output directly into a starting layout for a report build. The pitch is time saved on the planning stage rather than a finished report, cutting down the back-and-forth normally spent sketching layouts by hand.
- The NEW Power BI Matrix Features (And My Secret Pro Tip) The video reveals two major new Power BI Matrix features and shares Edward Charles’ insider tip for optimizing matrix visualizations with real-world examples.
- Introducing Excel Semantic Table Add-in The Excel Semantic Table Add-in enhances connected tables by reintroducing a PivotTable-style Field List and offers Deferred and Interactive execution modes for seamless data manipulation in Excel.
- Stop Using Cards! Power BI Finally Added Center Values to Donut Charts Power BI now lets you display key metrics directly in the center of donut charts, enhancing visual clarity and professionalism without needing overlay card visuals.
- Referencing Images And Other Files In Power BI Reports Using OneLake URLs Power BI now allows direct referencing of images and other files from OneLake, enabling secure storage alongside data without slowing refreshes or increasing model size.
- How to use the Power BI Desktop Bridge to automate tasks in Power BI Desktop and GitHub Copilot John Kerski shows how to use the Power BI Desktop Bridge together with Fabric AI Skills so GitHub Copilot can edit Power BI reports and semantic models directly, with changes hot-reloading in Desktop. He covers installing the required tools, enabling the bridge feature, and using agent hooks to scope how AI agents install and run commands within the project workspace rather than globally.
- I Built a Power BI Executive Dashboard Using ONLY AI (Claude Code, Full Build) This video shows how Anthropic’s Claude Code AI autonomously creates a full Power BI executive dashboard with DAX measures, data modeling, custom themes, and multiple visuals, streamlining the manual development process.
Deployment, Security and Operations
- #2 How Fabric Relates to Power BI Premium and Azure Synapse: Landscape and Migration Context Fabric is compatible with existing Power BI Premium and Azure Synapse features, introducing new SKU mappings and experience divisions to ease migration understanding of capacity overlaps.
- Manage Fabric connections at scale with Connection Recency APIs (Preview) The new Connection Recency APIs in Microsoft Fabric assist administrators in managing thousands of shared connections by offering insights into creation dates, last item linkage, and credential usage to resolve issues such as stale, duplicate, and poorly owned connections.
- Business Ops Has Moved to GitHub Business Ops, Power BI Desktop’s external tools manager, is now hosted on GitHub to improve distribution, simplify updates, and enhance code management.
- Who Can See What? A Complete Power BI Access Audit Solution in Microsoft Fabric This solution in Microsoft Fabric uses Fabric notebooks to audit Power BI access permissions, collecting data on row-level security, object-level security, role memberships, Entra ID groups, and workspace roles, providing results via a dedicated Power BI report.
- On-premises data gateway August 2026 release The August 2026 on-premises data gateway release version 3000.330 improves manageability, governance, and security while maintaining compatibility with the latest Power BI Desktop features for smooth cloud connectivity.
- How to Set Up Scheduled Refresh in Power BI (Step-by-Step) This video walks through setting up scheduled refresh in Power BI, covering how to configure automatic updates for reports connected to various cloud data sources and troubleshooting failed refreshes.
General
- Will AI Replace Power BI Developers? AI will not fully replace Power BI developers, but the role now emphasizes validating AI-generated outputs over traditional building.
- Is Power BI Still Worth Learning in 2026? Power BI will remain valuable in 2026 due to the growing importance of AI-generated report verification over manual creation, as shown by Gartner's recognition and real-world applications of agentic AI tools for data model auditing.