Power BI – Q4 2024

Maarten François

R&D Lead

Power BI – Q4 2024

Version Updates

Almost every month Power BI is being updated. These updates introduce additional features to enhance your ability to integrate or analyze, while also addressing any issues such as bugs or security vulnerabilities. As with the last quarter, the amount of new features is quite limited. For Q4 of 2024, there are only updates for October and November.

1. Copilot availability in Power BI Mobile (PREVIEW)

2. Copilot Summary for subscriptions (PREVIEW)

Reporting

1. Visual calculations update (PREVIEW)

Visual calculations can be used in combo charts (eg: returning a moving average within a bar/line combo chart where the line chart would display the moving average with a visual calculation)
Visual calculation now work in visuals that contain field parameters
Visual calculation results are now visible in exports (Not when you export underlying data)
The “New Visual Calculation” menu button now has a list of predefined templates to start your Visual Calculation from:

2. Marker Updates

Markers for line charts, scatter charts, and anomalies have been updated with new options for customization:

Categories & Series options for Line and scatter charts
New/enhanced format settings for line charts, scatter charts and anomalies
- Shape
- Color
- Border

3. List Slicer (PREVIEW)

A new visual has been added to PREVIEW. It’s another slicer visual next to the already existing (old) slicer. It adds a new way for users to filter the other visuals. Also note that these list slicers can work with hierarchical data, which gives the option to pop open lower level values.

4. Path Layer in Azure Maps

Network Analysis or Flight Path analysis are now possible to be displayed in the Azure Maps visual.

5. Card visual can now be displayed as small multiples (PREVIEW)

When trying to display a series of KPI, you can now use the card visual to display them in a grid next to each other. Eg: Number of stores and sales per region.

6. Text Slicer (PREVIEW)

Another slicer has been added in PREVIEW to help users filter their data. This new slicer adds an input box in which the user would type in keywords to filter on a specific field.

Modelling

1. Filter behavior update (PREVIEW)

New options have been added to influence how DAX should filter data.

Currently, if a data set contains 4 black products in 2024, 1 white product in 2024 and 3 black products in 2025. And we use a DAX calculation to show “All Products over all Years” this would show us 8 products. However, if we start filtering the data to 2025 and black or white, the DAX calc will only show 7 since 2025 does not contain any white products. It only filters combinations that exist within the same table.

To fix this, the “Independent” option is added to force the filtering to differently affect the numbers. Both Year and Color function will be considered separate instead of combined.

Developers

1. TMDL Extension for Visual Studio Code (PREVIEW)

A new extension is now in PREVIEW for use in Visual Studio Code. When editing a TMDL, with the new extension, you will get: