Weekly PowerBI

What shipped

• DAX user-defined functions: Visual calculations (Generally Available) in Power BI, making it easier to add DAX calculations directly to the visual where they’re used. (02 Jul)
• Power BI reports and Fabric Apps: Expanding how you build on your semantic model data: Power BI reports continue to help analysts build secure, governed BI experiences on semantic models, while Fabric Apps expands what developers can create from the same trusted data. (01 Jul)
• Agentic and Copilot reporting workflows: Power BI Desktop Bridge (Preview) Power BI Desktop Bridge introduces a new way of working, allowing external applications and agents to interact directly with Power BI Desktop! (30 Jun)
• Protect once, enforce everywhere: Protection policies for Power BI: How to use sensitivity labels and Protection Policies to secure your Power BI estate — and why it matters more than ever in the age of AI. (24 Jun)
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Denodo connector in Power BI: When you configure a Denodo data connection for Entra ID SSO, users querying a semantic model in DirectQuery mode are authenticated to Denodo with their own Microsoft Entra ID identity. (23 Jun)
• Connector migration from ODBC to ADBC: If you use connectors like Databricks, Snowflake, or BigQuery in Power BI or Fabric, there’s an important change coming. (18 Jun)
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Starburst connector in Power BI: When enabling Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on (SSo) for Starburst (Preview) report viewers querying semantic models in DirectQuery mode authenticate to Starburst with their own Entra ID identity, to… (18 Jun)
• Monthly Power BI feature summary: Author: Katie Murray, Senior Program Manager - Power BI continues to evolve with updates that make it easier to explore data, generate insights, and build more polished reports. (17 Jun)
• Workspace outbound access protection: Workspace outbound access protection (OAP) is a workspace-level control in Microsoft Fabric that lets you constrain where the data inside a workspace can flow. (17 Jun)
• Org apps with audiences: Announcing general availability of org apps in Power BI and Fabric, including one of the most requested capabilities: audiences. (16 Jun)

Why it matters

• DAX user-defined functions: Reusable DAX functions are production-ready, making complex semantic-model logic easier to standardise.
• Power BI reports and Fabric Apps: Expanding how you build on your semantic model data: Power BI reports continue to help analysts build secure, governed BI experiences on semantic models, while Fabric Apps expands what developers can create from the same trusted data.
• Agentic and Copilot reporting workflows: Microsoft is pushing more report design, semantic-model analysis and deployment tasks into AI-assisted workflows.
• Protect once, enforce everywhere: Protection policies for Power BI: How to use sensitivity labels and Protection Policies to secure your Power BI estate — and why it matters more than ever in the age of AI.
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Denodo connector in Power BI: When you configure a Denodo data connection for Entra ID SSO, users querying a semantic model in DirectQuery mode are authenticated to Denodo with their own Microsoft Entra ID identity.
• Connector migration from ODBC to ADBC: Power BI and Fabric connectors are moving toward Arrow Database Connectivity for several major data platforms.
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Starburst connector in Power BI: When enabling Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on (SSo) for Starburst (Preview) report viewers querying semantic models in DirectQuery mode authenticate to Starburst with their own Entra ID identity, to Starburst's…
• Monthly Power BI feature summary: The feature summary collects reporting, modeling, Copilot and service updates into one release note surface.
• Workspace outbound access protection: Power BI reports can inherit workspace-level controls that restrict where data is allowed to flow.
• Org apps with audiences: Power BI and Fabric org apps can now target different audiences from one governed app package.

How analytics teams could use it

• DAX user-defined functions: Model owners can reduce repeated measure patterns and enforce shared business logic across reports.
• Power BI reports and Fabric Apps: Expanding how you build on your semantic model data: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Agentic and Copilot reporting workflows: Analytics teams can prototype report pages, inspect models and automate authoring tasks while keeping humans in review for metric quality.
• Protect once, enforce everywhere: Protection policies for Power BI: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Denodo connector in Power BI: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Connector migration from ODBC to ADBC: BI teams should audit Databricks, Snowflake and BigQuery connection paths so driver changes do not surprise production refreshes.
• Microsoft Entra ID single sign-on for the Starburst connector in Power BI: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Monthly Power BI feature summary: BI leads can use it as a checklist for capabilities to test in report authoring, semantic modeling and self-service workflows.
• Workspace outbound access protection: Security and BI platform teams can tighten exfiltration controls for sensitive reporting workspaces without redesigning every report.
• Org apps with audiences: Analytics product teams can ship one app with role-specific navigation and content rather than maintaining duplicate distribution surfaces.

Editorial read

Power BI is moving in two parallel directions: stronger governance for enterprise distribution, and more AI-assisted creation for reports and semantic models. For analytics products, the practical opportunity is to turn recurring BI assets into governed products: targeted audiences, safer data-flow controls, reusable DAX logic, and faster authoring loops.