On August 20, Microsoft released the latest update to Power BI Desktop. There are some great new features, some of them little but handy like the ability to resize columns in the data view, and others are a bigger deal like the ability to import Power Pivot models. The data modeling feature which has me most intrigued is the ability to move columns from one table to another. That is something which is not a feature found in most other data mashup tools. Moving columns I think provides for a more forgiving environment, which may encourage people new to the topic to play around with it.

When to use Power BI Desktop or Excel

I’ve been writing a lot about Power BI recently and have received some questions on my blog, but I am thinking there may be some more, especially about items in the latest release. There are a lot of interesting tools in Power BI and Excel. Having two tools means there are reasons, based on your unique environments, you may wish to use one or the other. If you have questions about this decision process, or other Power BI questions, I hope that you can make time to ask them on August 31, 10:00 EDT when I’m going to be speaking at the next SQL PASS – Excel Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter meeting, when I will be giving a talk Power Pivot – the Gateway to Power BI. The SQL PASS organization, which I am a member of and I hope you are too, has a number of virtual chapters around all things data, including Excel Business Intelligence, which provide the SQL Community with great information and training resources on a number of different topics. Registration for this talk is free, and I hope you will be able to attend and ask any Power BI related questions you may have.

 

Yours Always

Ginger Grant

Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur