Power BI has come a long way since it was introduced as an Excel add-in back in 2013. Today, it is one of the major competitors in the Data Visualisation market, a position that is also confirmed by being one of the leaders in the 2017 Gartner magic quadrant for BI & Analytics platforms along with Tableau and Qlik.

Having worked on Power BI since the past couple of years, I have seen it evolve with each monthly update to the point that it is giving jitters to other vendors who are now forced to review their licencing structures and come up with visionary features. The continuous agile delivery of features and a strong community that feeds back regularly to improve the product, have only done it good.

2017 in general, has been one of the most revolutionary years for Power BI. Power BI Report server gathered steam making businesses looking for on-premise deployment options happy and the new Premium pricing model was introduced. There have also been 150+ feature updates in the past 12 months to Power BI Desktop and after a lot of thought, below are my Top 5 features:

1. Drill through capability to another report page

This has been the most sought-after feature for me since the time Power BI was introduced. Naturally, I was visibly excited when it was mentioned that they are working on it in the Microsoft BI Insights Summit in June 2017. The functionality to select an item in one report page and see details in another via actions was readily available in rival products like Tableau and SSRS. Working with clients in different domains, this was a common requirement I had encountered (We want to see the high level total number in a tile and to have the ability to drill through and see low level details in a table or chart format). It may also have left Power BI behind in tool selection exercises in the past when such guided storytelling requirements were important. Now that this has been added, I feel a part of the story is complete. An example is below (select category --> drillthrough to desired report).

Figure 1: Drill through capability example

You can read more about this feature here: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-september-2017-feature-summary/#drillthrough

2. Custom Visuals

Another great addition to Power BI are the custom visuals, built by its user community. This is one area where Power BI beats other vendors by leaps and bounds. There are custom visuals to show a piece of information in a lot of possible ways. 2017 didn’t disappoint as well, some of my favourite custom visuals released this year are:

i) Power KPI Matrix

With this visual, it is easy to display an unlimited number of metrics and KPIs in a single, customized list.

Figure 2: Power KPI Matrix custom visual (PowerBI website)

ii) Card Browser

The Card Browser visual is a document set viewer featuring flippable, double-sided thumbnails for natural navigation of media collections. This is particularly good when you need to depict textual information in a visually appealing way.

Figure 3: Card Browser custom visual (PowerBI website)

iii) Social Network graph

The Social network graph custom visual can be used for visualizing connections between people or departments. One common scenario for this is visualizing an organization structure where employees report to managers in a hierarchy.

Figure 4: Social Network graph custom visual (PowerBI website)

iv) Power KPI

This chart is useful for displaying KPI information, showing a line chart with KPI trend, forecast line and other comparison lines.

Figure 5: Power KPI custom visual (PowerBI website)

v) Drill down donut charts

While donuts may not suit all requirements, this special hierarchical donut visual makes it more appealing to use it when necessary.

Figure 6: Drill down donut charts custom visual (PowerBI website)

3. Quick measures

Available from the April 2017 update, this feature lets you quickly create new measures based on measures and numerical columns in your table, without worrying about the complex DAX calculations underneath. Quick measures are a great way of learning DAX as well. You could create a quick measure using the GUI, see the underlying DAX definition and tweak it to suit your needs and get more comfortable with DAX. This is a significant boost for self-serve analytics and reduces the development effort. Some sample quick measures are in the image on the right.

4. What If Parameters

What if analysis is a key BI requirement. At times, users want to substitute their own value for a variable within a formula, and observe the effect it has on the end output. An example of one of these scenarios is in a mortgage calculator report, you’d want to change the % rate, borrowed amount, and term to see projected repayments. This is certainly one of the features I’m going to use more often. An example is below:

Figure 8: What if Parameter (PowerBI website)

5. Relative date slicer and filter

With this feature, time-based filtering can now be easily applied to any date column. The best part is that it will automatically refresh the charts when the data gets refreshed so you don’t have to worry about resetting the dates in the filters. This functionality is already present in some other tools and is a welcome addition in Power BI, making a user’s life much easier. An example is on the left.





Almost made the cut: Bookmarks. Like the story capability in Tableau, this can be used to frame an analysis journey for presentation and ad-hoc analysis. This is still evolving rapidly and it will soon find many takers in a world moving towards self-serve analytics.

Some nice to have features which I’m looking forward to having in 2018 are:

1. Global filters that can be used across dashboard tiles

2. Passing filters in URL

3. Tooltips customisation

4. Scheduled export of reports to PDF

5. Ability to copy/paste between PBIX files. This would enhance collaboration between the development team.

It has been a great year for Power BI and the future looks promising. I have no qualms in saying that Power BI is the self-service tool of the future. The ease of integration with other Microsoft applications only boosts its case further.

What was your top feature in Power BI this year?

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Sumit is a Business Intelligence and Analytics Consultant and a Certified Scrum Master. Get in touch with me if you would like to discuss anything in this sphere.



