This month, Microsoft released update 2.105.664.0 to Power BI.

Bringing a wealth of changes, we are very excited about the additions of Field Parameters and Data Point Rectangle Select. Field Parameters will help users both dynamically change the dimensions or measures that are on their report, while Data Point Rectangle Select will allow users to quickly delve into a visualisation and focus on certain data points.

Read on to learn more about the latest capabilities coming to Power BI.

What’s new

New Format Pane Updates

Summary: New format pane updates bring a new user-preference setting to determine whether sub-categories should remain expanded when opening a card.

Our thoughts: This is a welcome addition to Power BI update, as there has been overwhelming feedback from the community to give developers the option to expand all subcategories by default when you open a category. There will be continued improvements to this functionality next month, to refine this functionality further.

Data Point Rectangle Select

Summary: Users can now select multiple data points at once by clicking & dragging over a supported type of visual

Our thoughts: The Data Point Select is a quick and easy way to select multiple data points on a visualisation. Before this newly introduced functionality, users would have to manually select each data point they were interested in separately, which was time-consuming and not very user-friendly. Users can now quickly view multiple data points by holding CTRL and dragging their cursor, which will then select all data points within the shaded rectangle.

The data point rectangle select is available for line, area, scatter, treemap, and map visuals. There is a 3500 data point limit for the number which you can select at once.

Canvas Zoom

Summary: Users can now zoom on the canvas from Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop

Our Thoughts: Canvas Zoom will enhance how both users and developers can interact with Power BI. For users, this will enhance the readability of the report, as they will be able to magnify visualisations if they need to delve into data in more detail or demo the visualisation to someone else.

For developers, Canvas Zoom will help make tweaks to reports by adding more precision to their design. Once zoomed in, users can then use the “fit to page” functionality to quickly zoom out to page level. This zoom level isn’t saved with the report, so the next user won’t be affected by how the report is left.

What’s changed

Error bars for Combo Charts

Summary: Error bars have now been brought to combo charts

Our Thoughts: Error bars are now available for combo charts, following on from last month, in which they were introduced to clustered column and bar charts. These further changes to error bars will continue to help progress the statistical analysis potential with Power BI.

Closing comments

The changes for May 2022 have introduced improvements to report user-friendliness and report development. Microsoft has promised that added functionality to be added in the coming months to the likes of the New Format Pane Updates, which will continue to improve the user experience.

Microsoft responded to the raft of feedback regarding the New Format Pane, and it’s great to see that they are continuing to make improvements based on the Power BI community.

The added functionality of selecting multiple data points will also improve how users can interact with Power BI reports, which Microsoft are always looking to tweak and enhance.

To read more of our insights on the latest Power BI updates and tools, why not visit our Power BI blog here.