What is new in the April 2018 Power BI Desktop update
Part one of a six-part series of blogs

This month's update allows users to add customisable buttons to a report, incorporates a numeric slicer and includes a few other smaller changes.

  1. New features in the April 2018 update of Power BI Desktop (this blog)
  2. Action buttons
  3. Numeric slicers
  4. Changing the line and marker style for combination charts
  5. Choose your organisational custom visuals
  6. Features still in preview as of April 2018

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

Posted by Andy Brown on 07 April 2018

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New features in the April 2018 update of Power BI Desktop

This month's quote from the Microsoft update page:

We're not fooling about how happy we are about this month's updates to Power BI Desktop. We're showering the updates across a handful of areas, and hope they help you grow your future reports with amazing, beautiful visuals.

Following the roll-out of bookmarks last month, you can now assign actions to buttons, rather than having to assign actions to custom shapes and images.  There are also a few other smaller changes.

Update Notes
Buttons You can assign actions (such as bookmarks) to buttons, which can contain a customisable icon and/or descriptive text.
Numeric slicers If you're using a slicer for a numeric amount, this will automatically appear as a slider, with a lower and upper threshold.
Combination charts You can change the line and marker style for the line chart component of a combination chart.
Organisation visuals You can group custom visuals recommended for use within your company into their own tab.

I've also included the now traditional look at those features which are still stuck in preview.

The way in which you download Power BI Desktop seems to have changed a bit, and there are improvements to the default sort order used for visuals, but both of these changes will become apparent when you use the relevant bits of the software.

  1. New features in the April 2018 update of Power BI Desktop (this blog)
  2. Action buttons
  3. Numeric slicers
  4. Changing the line and marker style for combination charts
  5. Choose your organisational custom visuals
  6. Features still in preview as of April 2018
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