The most important changes included in the June 2017 Power BI Desktop update
Part six of a nine-part series of blogs

This update includes lots of nice features, such as line markers and the ability to change font typefaces, as well as many more changes!

  1. Changes for the June 2017 update for Power BI Desktop
  2. Data Bars in the Preview Table and Matrix Visualisations
  3. Chart Line Markers and Line Effects
  4. Making reports accessible to people with disabilities
  5. Changes to maps
  6. Improvements to the Column by Example feature (this blog)
  7. Horizontal slicers can now contain images
  8. Font family support for visuals
  9. Changes for combination charts

For a cumulative list of all of the updates to Power BI Desktop in the last few months, see this blog.

Posted by Andy Brown on 26 June 2017

You need a minimum screen resolution of about 700 pixels width to see our blogs. This is because they contain diagrams and tables which would not be viewable easily on a mobile phone or small laptop. Please use a larger tablet, notebook or desktop computer, or change your screen resolution settings.

Improvements to the Column by Example feature

I wrote about this in my April update, and as promised Microsoft have improved what was already an exciting new feature.  To remind you, the feature allows you to create new columns by suggestion:

Column by Example

In Query Editor, you can click on this tool to create a new column by example (Excel has had a similar feature for a while).

 

You can now double-click in the new column, and choose snippets of expression to display:

Choosing bits of columns to display

You can combine different expressions to build up a new column.

Scrolling down and ticking a day name expression for example creates this:

Purchase day name

A potential new column to show the day of any purchase.

 

What this example also shows is that Microsoft have extended the range of transformations possible for this feature, particularly with regard to dates.

  1. Changes for the June 2017 update for Power BI Desktop
  2. Data Bars in the Preview Table and Matrix Visualisations
  3. Chart Line Markers and Line Effects
  4. Making reports accessible to people with disabilities
  5. Changes to maps
  6. Improvements to the Column by Example feature (this blog)
  7. Horizontal slicers can now contain images
  8. Font family support for visuals
  9. Changes for combination charts
This blog has 0 threads Add post