Microsoft Power BI Desktop – Update March 2023

Power BI is a powerful business intelligence solution from Microsoft that allows you to connect, analyze, and visualize data from multiple sources. With Power BI, you can create interactive dashboards and reports that provide valuable insights for your business decisions.

In March 2023, Microsoft announced some exciting new features and enhancements for Power BI, which we would like to share with you in this post.

Visual Container Enhancements

With this update, Microsoft is introducing three key features that will allow you to customize the container of your visual elements.

Captions - You can now enable a caption to add additional context to your images. You can find the new Subtitle button on the Title Settings card of the Formatting panel.

Divider - To visually separate the visual header from its content, you can add a divider. You can find the "Divider" option in the Title Settings of the Formatting Area under the new "Subtitle".

Spacing - In addition to subtitles and separators in your visual container, you can control the area under each component. You'll find the Spacing setting at the bottom of the Formatting Area's Title Settings card.

Padding - You can now control the border of the container to create a negative area that makes the visuals more professional and appealing. You can find this new option on the Properties card of the Formatting Area.

Storytelling in PowerPoint

Using Power BI's integration with PowerPoint, you can easily include interactive Power BI visualizations in your PowerPoint presentations:

• Power BI/PowerPoint integration is enabled in all Microsoft clouds.
• You can add individual visual elements to PowerPoint slides, not just full report pages.
• You can use Smart Insights to retrieve a text description of the data displayed in the add-in.

On-object interaction (opt-in)

On-object interaction is a new feature in Power BI that allows you to right-click on a visual element to open the formatting pane. This makes it easier and faster to format your visual elements without having to go through the visualizations pane. You can quickly change formatting options such as colors, fonts, and borders directly from the visual element. This feature is still in preview.

To enable it, you need to select File > Options and Settings > Options > Preview Functions > Object Interaction in Power BI Desktop and restart Power BI Desktop3. You can then create a new visual element in one of three ways: Selecting or dragging fields from the Data pane, dragging an empty visual element from the Visualizations pane, or clicking on the report page.