The Data Engine Room

Yesterday we had an whole host of new features announced in the keynote ( see my first part in this series for more information). Whilst the main announcements focused on Fabric features, we do have a number of announcements to cover specifically around Power BI.  If this proves popular, I'll be moving to seperating out announcements for Power BI and the wider Fabric platform separately. But before we get going on new features, let's address the elephant in the room ... Power BI Price increases As of today, the list price for Power BI has gone up by a significant amount (e.g. Premium per user going from £15.00 to £18.50 per user per month - about a 19% increase). From what I'm seeing this increase is pretty much causing the pushback that partners warned Microsoft would happen. If you are licensing via O365 E5 licensing you are excluded from this price change. The cloud in the silver lining is that whilst it may not seem like Power BI has had many new features in the last ye...

After last nights keynote, we've so many announcements and new features to digest that it's going to take a few blog posts to get through everything. Given that I'm going to split the announcements to cover: Keynote, Power BI, Fabric, Purview, and preview features. Let's get started. For this blog, if you have a specific feature you want to know more about do have a look at Arun's blog.  Unless it's a really major preview announcement, I'm going to focus on features that have gone GA - the reason, without doing a risk/reward evaluation, I personaly take the view that preview features shouldn't be used in production. That means for the majority, the preview features need to be considered in future roadmap plans but are unlikely to be used today. Up first, copilot. Co-pilot The big announcement in this space is that Copilot is now available at all SKU levels! This is a big one for the SME sector that couldn't justify the cost of an F64 SKU. Now you too...

Firstly, sorry this one's late. Life's been busy and only just getting back up to speed with what I'm now allowed to talk about. Looking back at what was announced in Feb, we start with Power BI Power BI The real major news is that the 32bit version of Power BI desktop will go out of suppot on 2025-06-30. If you are still using this, you need to upgrade to the 64 bit version asap. Other than that, a couple of copilot features have been added to add tablet support to the mobile app and to open the black box on how copilot has found insight. The second of these is a big one, being able to understand the data, measures, and filters that copilot has used is a massive step forwards in increasing confidence in results. Combine this with the new explore this visual option, copilot is getting more and more powerful. Fabric platform This month we see improvements to goverment of the estate within Fabric. Whilst it isn't to the same level as Purview is/will be (e.g. No DQ reports...

 And we're back. After Microsoft's traditional extended xmas shutdown, it's time to roundup the key features Microsoft released in January. Grab a cupa, and get ready for what promises to be a fairly lengthy post. First up, Power BI. Power BI For the lucky few with an F64 SKU, the new 'answer a question about the data' feature should have just landed for copilot in Power BI. With the ability to personalise these using the Q&A features in Power Bi desktop, they have real promise to help the C-Suite reliably answer regular questions without needing an analyst. As with all things copilot, do thoroughly test for hallucinations before letting it lose with end users. Whilst Microsoft have done a good job of reducing them, the tech isn't perfect yet. Next up, explore this data (preview feature). This allows us to take a visual in a report as the starting point for train of thought analysis. By clicking on the three dots a new window pops up alowing data to be added...

 With Ignite, and November, coming to a close, I turn my attention to this month's feature summary.  Unlike normal, I'm not going to focus on the headline announcements (those are covered off in a separate post ). Instead, this month is a dive into the new features that didn't make the keynotes. Power BI Co-pilot updates (Preview) Two great features in Copilot in Power BI mobile and summaries in subscriptions. Two great featured, again hampered by the lack of availability of DCs (especially in the EU). I say it every month, but the sooner Microsoft have more availability the better. Alerts using Activator and RTI in Fabric This is now GA and is way better than the old Power BI alerts. Definitely one to look at, but as a sanity warning Reflex has been renamed Activator. It's the right move, but will catch some people out. Metric sets (Preview) The metric sets is designed to help reduce KPI proliferation, and help users identify semantic models they need to answer specif...

With how popular my thoughts after Fabcon EU's keynote, I thought I'd do the same with the announcements out of Ignite. Again, we follow the themes of AI everywhere- with announcements grouped into: AI-powered Data platform Open and AI-ready data Lake AI-enabled business users Mission-critical foundation On top of these themes, we're seeing the number of items without CI/CD support being reduced. Long overdue, but at least it's now being resolved - and will be gone by the end of the year. AI-powered data platform This grouping is all about providing data teams with the tools they need to do their jobs. SQL Databases First up, we have SQL databases as a new Fabric component - basically a SaaS version of the Azure SQL DB that has been used for years. At face value, it seems like it's a small change but actually when you think about it, this looks to be a shift from Fabric being a purely analytical platform to an analytical and operational platform. Especially when you...