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Power BI Desktop Update: July 2018
Tanya Denton
Power BI Desktop Update: July 2018
July 2018 has been an exciting month for Power BI Desktop with updates which enhances your experience. We will be looking at a summary of the latest update.
In this blog, we will be focusing on the new and exciting 'Composite Models'. It is only a preview but it looks so interesting and useful!
Composite Models (Preview)
It was a common request for Power BI to allow you to connect to more than one data source using DirectQuery. It wasn't possible to connect to any other data source in the same report and to include data that has been imported. In the new update, the new Composite Models feature removes this restriction; meaning on a single report, you can seamlessly combine data from one or more DirectQuery sources, and you can also combine data from a mix of DirectQuery sources and import data.
Composite Models include a brand new feature call 'Dual Storage Mode'. This feature allows a copy of the data from a table will be imported, and any visuals that reference only columns from this will us the imported data and not placing a query to the underlying source. This improves performance and lessened load on the backend source.
Follow this path to enable these new features in Power BI Desktop: File > Options and Settings > Preview Feature and then select Composite Models.
Once you've enabled this, you can start importing additional tables to your DirectQuery model with no additional changes to your report. To take advantage of the Dual Storage model, you can set this for a table in the field properties pane.
You will then be able to see the storage mode in the tooltip for the table as well.
The status bar on the bottom right of your report will show a storage mode of 'Mixed' when you have DirectQuery and import tables. Clicking this allows all table to be switched to import mode easily.
| While this feature is in preview, it is currently not possible to publish a model that uses any of these features to the Power BI Service. |
Click on the links below to find out about those new features.
- New visual header with more flexibility and formatting
- Wallpaper formatting
- Theming update – more visual and page control (preview)
- Tooltips for table and matrix
- Turn tooltips off for visuals
- Slicer accessibility
- Formatting pane improvements
- Stepped line support for line and combo charts
- Turn off combo chart data labels for individual series
- Sorting experience improvement
- Power BI certified category
- Disabling specific organizational visual
- Visio custom visual generally available
- Mapbox custom visual generally available
- DataText Box custom visual
- China Scatter Map custom visual
See the Power BI Blog
For a detailed overview of these updates, please read the Power BI blog.
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