BLOGS BY TOPIC
BLOGS BY AUTHOR
BLOGS BY YEAR
This month sees features allowing you to change the appearance of the icons at the top right of each visual, and also to change the appearance of the wallpaper surrounding a report, but otherwise all of the enhancements are fairly minor.
- New Features for the July 2018 Update of Power BI Desktop
- Visual headers (a new way to display visual titles)
- Wallpaper formatting
- Minor changes to tooltips, the formatting pane and slicers
- Minor chart changes
- Changes to custom visuals (this blog)
- Summary of features still waiting in preview
For a cumulative list of all of the updates to Power BI Desktop in the last few year or two, see this blog, or have a look at the Power BI courses that we run.
Posted by Andy Brown on 25 July 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.
Changes to custom visuals
You can now choose to use certified custom visuals, and i can't resist mentioning the new Visio and Mapbox custom visual too.
Certified custom visuals
Suppose that you've chosen to import a custom visual:
The bottom right ellipsis ... tool allows you to import a custom visual from the Microsoft Store.
You can then use a new category to show only those visuals certified by Microsoft (ie which have had additional checks made by the Power BI team):
The Power BI Certified category.
Visio diagrams
Wise Owl used to teach Visio, and I have fond memories of it, so I'd just like to say that the Visio Visual custom visual exists!
This visual only understands Visio diagrams.
Mapbox visual
The Mapbox custom visual is now generally available. You have to sign in online to get a free access key, but you can then can create visuals with properties like this:
This looks exactly like the map visual in Power BI, which is surely by design.
The formatting properties show the different types of map you can create:
I tried a shape map (choropleth), but as ever the support was only built-in for international countries or US states.
Microsoft seem to be trying hard to give Power BI designers choices other than ArcGIS!