New features in the December 2017 update of Power BI Desktop
Part one of a six-part series of blogs

Field descriptions anyone? This is a fairly minor update, although we like responsive horizontal slicers, and there are some exciting things coming up in preview mode.

  1. December 2017 Updates (this blog)
  2. Field descriptions
  3. Scatter charts now compare numerical values
  4. Responsive slicers
  5. Drilling down filters all visuals for a page
  6. Undocumented new features

For a cumulative list of all of the updates to Power BI Desktop in the last few months, see this blog.  Our two-day Power BI Desktop course always uses the latest version of the software.

Posted by Andy Brown on 04 January 2018

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.

December 2017 Updates

A little later than usual, here are the updates introduced into Power BI Desktop in December 2017:

Feature Notes
Field descriptions You can now give fields descriptions, which appear as tooltips when you linger over them.
Scatter charts for numbers If you compare two numbers, you can choose not to aggregate them to show all combinations in your dataset.
Responsive slicers You can tell Power BI Desktop to change the display of horizontal slicers as you resize them.
Drill-down filters visuals When you drill-down in a chart containing a hierarchy, this now (by default) filters other visuals.
Other changes It's easier now to change font sizes, and to move objects forward or backward.

As so often, though, the big story is what's happening for preview features.  Imminent changes include bookmarks (which are getting ever more sophisticated), quick measures and Q&A for reports (and not just for dashboards).

  1. December 2017 Updates (this blog)
  2. Field descriptions
  3. Scatter charts now compare numerical values
  4. Responsive slicers
  5. Drilling down filters all visuals for a page
  6. Undocumented new features
This blog has 0 threads Add post