Power BI: Top 10 Roadmap Announcements – Bus App Summit

• Important Power BI enterprise features were discussed at the recent Business App Summit but not highlighted in Microsoft’s promotion of the event.
• Streaming data, Excel refresh, and other plans enhance Power BI as a data repository, not just a report hub.
• Most of the enterprise related announcements are limited to Premium subscriptions.
• Hype around Power BI in Teams is more about promoting Teams than improving Power BI.

The annual Microsoft Business Application Summit, in early Apr. 2021, provided a glimpse into Microsoft’s plans for Power BI that will interest organizations using or evaluating the technology. Most of the features listed here are in preview and are expected in late 2021 or 2022.

More Sophisticated Report Design

Important planned updates for Power BI report design tools include the better integration of classic SQL Server reports and workflow features to make reports more actionable.

Paginated Reports (RDLs) Inside Power BI Reports

A new paginated report visual will allow report authors to embed traditional paginated reports (SQL Server Reporting Services reports) inside Power BI reports, alongside other visuals. Power BI introduced support for hosting paginated reports in 2019 as stand-alone reports, but it required users to open a paginated report separately from a Power BI report and manually switch between the reports for analysis. The change will help data analysts and allow developers to repurpose older reports in Power BI without rewriting them, which could help migration efforts. Embedding paginated reports in a Power BI report will eliminate this requirement and help analysts by supporting the linked filtering and slicing of Power BI visuals that ensures all displayed content is using the same filter and slicing settings.