Power BI - April 2025 GA features

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As we go into May, last months update list has landed and it's time to go through what's new and what's worth knowing about. Given the volume of updates we're getting now, I'm going to keep splitting out my thoughts into:


First up, general updates.

General

If you are using the Q&A feature, be aware that once you upgrade desktop to the April '25 release the report will no longer be backwards compatible. All dev's will need to move to the April desktop release to be able to open the PBIX.

Copilot and AI

With all things Copilot, this comes with a sanity warning that if you are in the UK and enable the out of region access, then you open up a risk that data could be sent to the US. Please see my Fabric GA feature post this month for more info.

Adhoc calculation support in read mode

Previously if you wanted to create an adhoc calculation to support Copilot threads, you had to do it in edit mode. Now this works in read mode as well.

Reporting

New file picker experience

The previous preview feature is now enabled by default.

Mobile layout auto-create

This feature is now GA, and it means you don't have to spend time creating mobile layouts (which very few did because of the overhead). Now we can click auto-create to use the desktop layout to build the mobile view for both visible and hidden objects as a starting point.

Hopefully this should encourage more mobile specific views to be created.

Visualisations

Azure Maps auto-zoom improvements

Azure maps now has the option to include any reference layers that are being used when the visual auto-zooms. My experience on reference layers across multiple visualisation types is that it normally those reference layers are US focused unless it is a 3rd party product, but worth checking.

Beyond this it's the usual mix of 3rd party updates and releases.

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