Weekly PowerBI

What shipped

• Deep dive into the Shape Map in Power BI: Discover how the Shape Map visual (Generally Available) in Power BI helps you bring custom geographic boundaries, flexible map formats, and data-driven color formatting into your reports. (10 Jul)
• Deep dive into tooltip options in Power BI visuals: Discover how Power BI’s tooltip (Generally Available) options help you tailor hover experiences—from curated field lists and sentence-style insights to fully custom report page tooltips. (10 Jul)
• Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms: We’re proud to share that Microsoft has once again been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for the nineteenth consecutive year. (10 Jul)
• 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. (10 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. (10 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! (10 Jul)
• 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. (10 Jul)
• 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. (10 Jul)
• 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… (10 Jul)
• 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. (10 Jul)
• Org apps with audiences: Announcing general availability of org apps in Power BI and Fabric, including one of the most requested capabilities: audiences. (10 Jul)
• Simplified Oracle connectivity: Connecting Power BI to Oracle has historically meant extra provider installations and data gateway deployment — even for cloud-hosted databases. (10 Jul)

Why it matters

• Deep dive into the Shape Map in Power BI: Discover how the Shape Map visual (Generally Available) in Power BI helps you bring custom geographic boundaries, flexible map formats, and data-driven color formatting into your reports.
• Deep dive into tooltip options in Power BI visuals: Discover how Power BI’s tooltip (Generally Available) options help you tailor hover experiences—from curated field lists and sentence-style insights to fully custom report page tooltips.
• Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms: We’re proud to share that Microsoft has once again been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for the nineteenth consecutive year.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 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…
• 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.
• Simplified Oracle connectivity: Oracle connections become easier by reducing dependency on extra providers and gateway-heavy setup paths.

How analytics teams could use it

• Deep dive into the Shape Map in Power BI: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Deep dive into tooltip options in Power BI visuals: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 Starburst connector in Power BI: Assess whether it improves governance, authoring speed, semantic-model quality, connector reliability or app distribution.
• 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.
• Simplified Oracle connectivity: Teams can connect BI models to Oracle-backed operational data with less platform plumbing and faster proof-of-value cycles.

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.