I'm here to bring you the top 5 features in the Power BI
November
2018 update now number one is pretty amazing
But it needs something extra at the end of this video you can also access the complete playlist
for the highlights of all the recent Power BI updates hey I'm Avi Singh Power BI Pro and Microsoft MVP and
my goal
is to make you a pro in Power BI and if you would like that make sure to subscribe and click the
Bell so you are notified whenever I go live to answer your Power BI questions. We're going to cover the five key
Features in the Power BI November update now number 5 around QA holds a lot of promise
but let's start at number one. Now if there are any updates that you would like to see in Power BI
make
sure to leave them in the comments so we can all work for them. So the number one feature is the new
modeling view now that's the biggest change we've seen in the modeling environment in power bi
but I could use a little bit more there but let's dive in and see what it's about so the modeling view is a
Preview feature so make sure to turn it on if you're using it right now
Once you do turn it on what you're gonna see is you're gonna see another icon over here now
Oddly enough if you hover over it they both say
relationships, well and stop working there you go relationships and
relationships but this one which has a slightly different icon is the new relationship view now look closely so right now we're in the
Classical relationship view alright and now I'm gonna switch to the new modeling view now
Well the layout feel looks a little bit different but it's essentially showing me the exact same
Tables but believe me this is so powerful so let's get started you can select multiple elements and
edit them in bulk
changing their format and things like that
you can also do is specify
Description for elements including tables or your columns or your measure now this is a great feature
Which used to exist in PowerPivot but I missed that in power bi and why it is so amazing is that it lets you
automatically
document the model based on the metadata you specify in the model itself so essentially create a data dictionary for your model now I am
Going to do a future video on this so watch out for that and I'm going to link it right here in this video when
it's available so the first thing here is when you select any element be it a table be it a column or a
Measure now you have a rich set of parameters available here, which you can quickly change around
Modeling some which have not been available earlier one of those is the display folder now
What that does is lets you organize
your elements basically measures in
Folders of its own so what I've done here is I have put some of my measures
into a sub
Subfolder so everything of them under sales measures and then some of them are in order and some of them are in sales now when
You go to the reporting view what's gonna happen is over on this side
At the same organization that I've set in my model let's try that again
You can see that over here so all my measures well I forgot about this one but everything else is
in this display folder and within that you have subfolders for my order measures and and
my sales measure now this was obviously something arbitrary because I just wanted to show you the the display folders but in
complex models often we end up with hundreds and hundreds of measures so this would give you a
Very flexible and effective way to organize measures not just for yourself but for the sake of your end users as well
Who would be connecting the model to create their own reports and one other thing that
We have in the modeling view is ability to create multiple views
And you can simply do that using the plus button over here and I've already done that here
So once you click plus then you can add some
Tables on it as you like and I've already created one view here sales and what this can do is give you a simplified
View of your model and just can just make kind of working with the model
Easier now of course this one is simplistic to begin with but a real-life
Barbie our model can have
fifty to a hundred
Tables sometimes and can get really complicated but this would help you keep it straight often there are multiple subject
Areas so just by creating these these different views for different subject
areas
Or actually that the right term here is a layout so different layout for this diagram view on this relationship you
can help you kind of keep things straight forward now
What I would say is when I saw this then I started creating for one other feature which actually has
Existed for a long time in believenot power pivot so pivot is power bi is cousin that lives inside
Excel it's pretty much the same engine used uses the same Dax and same relationship model
Now this one has had the feature called
perspectives now perspectives may look similar to layout so here this is how you define
Perspectives so here I've defined a sales only
Perspective with the limited set of table and I'm gonna switch to that from here so I'm gonna switch to let's say sales only table
And you would see that it has just you know it's a simpler set of tables or if I can switch to budget only table
But it is so much more than layouts now perspectives get defined in the model so that
Not just the author but the end user can connect to that specific perspective as well so this is where it really
comes in handy
so once an author defines the perspective then an end user
connecting into that single source of truth can select the
perspective that
they
want to look at the perspective that they want to see now this is how it looks like when an end user is
connecting to that model it just asks you hey what do you want to connect to would you like to see the complete model or
it does have these perspectives
Defined and you can choose
Just those perspectives and so let's see how it's gonna look from the end user so here I have an excel file
Which doesn't have the data model is connected to the data model that I showed you with
perspectives define and I have one a table here which is connected to
the the
Model itself and you can see this has
everything that the model offers this has all of the tables available there now I have another pivot table which is
Connected only to the sales prospectus so notice this does not have the budget table so it's a simplified
Perspective and the next one is only connected to the budget table so only has those tables now again imagine a complex model
5200 tables an end user
for the first time they start connect to connect to their model it can be
Overwhelming for them looking at all those tables and all their values so here you can give them a step by step
Access a lot of them to connect to a very simple perspectives once they are used to that then they can move beyond or
If you have multiple subject areas you can have them hey if you're looking for movies data connect to this perspective if you're looking for
reviews data connect to that something like that so perspectives can be pretty useful now of course that exists in
Excel as I showed you a
negative event but it's not there in power bi now the modeling view is great and
I would love to see the perspective feature there as well so I have just submitted an idea for that and I would love to
Get your votes for that so we'll link that down below
Make, sure to give it a go head over to that site and vote for it number two is about one of the biggest changes
In power bi ever delivered, which is composite models and the good news is that is now
Generally available so I'm gonna link to the video where I've covered composite model in detail
Once you through this video you can go ahead and watch that by clicking on the link up here
Or down in the description number three is a set of features around
Reporting so let's go ahead and take a look at them the first one is the ability to expand and collapse
column essentially
it's gonna make your matrix look more like a pivot table in Excel so here in this matrix I'm
using the new features so let's focus on this and
you can see it's it's quite like the pivot table that we all used to and love so you can kind of expand
a
specific thing and of course this is all custom this is you can add in whatever you want in these rows and build it the
way you want you, also have options to gonna right click and say X
Expand entire level and things like that so you can turn it on by going to the row
headers and just turning on the toggle the plus minus icon thing now what I would say is that I don't
Feel, I mean this is quite like a pivot table but this
In my mind is not a real substitute for a pivot table anybody
who
Is used to excel and is
you know familiar with Excel for and I have been using it for many many years
I've seen them fly through a pivot table and it's got so many functionalities built in
So the best way to deliver that is to give them an Excel pivot table
connected to the bar bi
Single model single source of truth now of course power bi the current plus/minus hackin
It's a great addition but if you really want to pay the table then create a pivot table in Excel
Connect it to your model the next feature in the reporting section is
Ability to copy/paste between desktop now of course it's gonna be handy if you have elements like
Your company logo or some text which you can you know just kind of copy from one power bi desktop
File and just paste you another desktop file making it very convenient now you can also select
Graphical elements and and you know tables and cards and matrices and all of that and copy paste it across models now of course
It's it's gonna work if the models are
alike if they have the same structure if
It's not the same structure it will copy but you'll have to fix it after you copy paste into the new model now
I do have a word of advice some caution here if you do find yourself
building
multiple
Similar models you have you have gone wrong somewhere my friend
mostly the reasons have people have behind building similar models can be solved much more
effectively by other means by either building a single model which has all of the data instead of
multiple models or
By building a single model and if you're looking for security providing adding draw level security to your model the next feature in the reporting
Section is the updated filtering experience and this one I
Certainly like now this is a preview feature so you would have to turn it on and for
existing files you would have to go to the report settings and turn it on over there and this is what it looks like
so here we have the new and beautiful filtering pane so this the
The way I understand it is that
This filtering pane is gonna stay available but that one is meant for authors for authors to set
Visual level page level report level filters and all of that and it's always going to be there but again that's meant for
Authors that that does feel a little geeky too this is simplified version
Which as you see even?
Visually kind of blends in with the report looks like a part of it and this is meant for end users now it's got lots
Of features in there you can lock the filters or some filters so that the end users cannot change it
otherwise end users are able to change it here you
also have very fine control about the way it's displayed the formatting expanded collapsed all of that and I
also want to show you how how this looks and the power bi comp of this report here it is in
In the browser on the power bi calm side and you can see it feels it feels
very seamless and has a much cleaner look to it number four is about
Color saturation and conditional formatting so this has been simplified in the models now so now
when you're authoring and
earlier some elements had a separate color
Saturation field right there and you had to drop something in there to add color saturation but for others
We have the conditional formatting so now for tables matrices column charts and other elements it's all
Combined into a single way to add this formatting and you can activate that
by going to data colors and looking at advanced controls so for this one
Advanced controls I mean there there are the standard options built into that and this might
Spend even more as power bi progresses but right now they're pretty flexible you can use a color scale which I'm using right here and
and for the other one where I
think I was using well I think
Using rules well you have rules as well and of course you can use a specific field value as well to provide your color so
The same kind of functionality but now it's simplified and as one way of setting it using advanced controls or
Conditional formatting for all of these visual elements number five is a new feature in the Q&A Explorer now QA is one of those features
which has been hit-or-miss
Whenever I've tried to implement it with a client but it's also the one that holds the most promise
Because when you can get it to work it's a thing of beauty
It blows people away so let's look at the most recent addition to this now a QA
Explorer is where you can drop in a button which allows the users to
start the Q&A experience and and you do that by simply going to buttons and just add the
Q&A button so that's why I've already done so now what the user is gonna do is when they click on this button
Then this is gonna pop up and you can also as an author add?
Specific questions to seed them to give them ideas of the type of questions that you can ask
So I'll talk to you about the recent change
Which is well it's easy to show you so ask a related question so let's say if I say
Country in Europe and and bear with me here is a country in Europe and then I say cool
I got the countries in Europe but I want to ask something about
that and that's what I'm gonna
Click ask a related question and then I'll say well okay so for those
country
show me the sales and
Rate so you can see it remembered the context I didn't have to say that again let's try something else
those country by sales comma budget
I don't know can I say by month along that too crazy that didn't work let's try this
oops, I guess we'll stick to sales but the idea here is also that it's all it's a bit of an interrogation it's a
bit of a dialogue going back and forth and if you noticed here that it does keep the
History of your conversation so obviously. I'm working with adventureworks here so it didn't feel
Pretty good over here but you can imagine a whole conversation where you kind of go back and forth and this keeps those
Conversations so this is again a great addition to something
which is a
promising feature to begin with my best advice to somebody who's implementing Q&A is it's best to create a
Separate model based on your original model which is tuned
only for Q&A that that's how I've gotten the best results with Q&A and
focusing on
Starting with the top five questions which are most frequently asked and which you would want the model to answer just get get the model
Smart enough to answer that and then keep working on the next questions now there's one thing that I would like to see in that
QA now
I would love to see that just you know the just
The format it a little bit like what we used to seeing messages back and forth I just think that would be really cool
Now what updates are you waiting for in power bi add them in the comment below
So that we can all work for them and you can access the complete playlist
With all the highlights for all the recent power bi updates right here or down in the links below now these are bi updates sometimes
Make me feel overwhelmed sometimes I feel like I'm running on a treadmill now I want to remind you that
it's it's not about that when you're learning power bi especially, when you're getting started you're best served by
focusing on the core by focusing on the 20%
Concepts that's gonna give you the 80% of the results and for that my power bi tutorial is a great place to start
I'll see you next time power on
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