So from last week to almost having nothing to talk about, to this week having a whole host of updates.

Just to quickly mention I attended the first local Power BI User Group meeting in Brisbane this evening ( QLD Power BI User Group ), and it had a really great turnout, along with some great content for the first user group. I have no doubt that it will grow from strength to strength.

So let’s get into the details there is a lot to cover here.

Power BI – Publish in Web App

This has been one of the most requested things that have been voted on. And it is great to see that they have listened again to what the people and users are asking for and have delivered it.

There are a few things to be aware of is that once you embed it into another application all your security is not valid.

Along with this currently due to it being in preview there might be an additional cost to have this capability. Which I can understand in a way because they are actually providing this outside of Power BI, and by making it available for anyone to interact, that means that there are things that are happening within the cloud that needs to be accounted for.

You can find out the details here: Announcing Power BI “publish to web” preview

Power BI – Enterprise Gateway General Availability

This is something that I have covered in the past, and it is great to see that they have incorporated all the features into one product.

This means it will make it easier to install, configure and get people using your on premise data. As you can see that this is something that I am already using and will be a great feature going forward.

Also the ability to handle failovers, as well as having the performance counter information will be great for viewing what is happening as well as the performance of the gateway.

You can find out the details here: Announcing General Availability of Power BI gateway for enterprise deployments

Power BI – January Desktop Update

This was announced last week, and there are a whole host of updates in the Power BI Desktop. I will go through a few ones here that I think are really important.

As you can see above, you can now add borders as well as Cartesian charts’ plot area.

Along with this, I really liked that you can now refresh data in individual tables, because sometimes in the past you did not want to refresh everything including your largest table.

And finally I see that they are still making performance improvements and cross rending is great. It has always been a fast visualization, but to make even that little bit faster means that everything will be that much quicker and who does not like speed?

You can find details here: Power BI Updates This Week: New Report Authoring Capabilities

Power BI – Troux Content Pack

This is yet another content pack, and if you are an existing Troux customer then I am sure that using Power BI will give you some great insights into your technology investments. Which will help you understand your data and how best you can leverage on your information.

You can find the details here: Explore your Troux data in Power BI

Power BI – New Custom Visuals

As you can see above there have been 3 new great visuals that have been released. And to me they are concentrated around mostly financials, which is great to see.

You can go here to see all the visuals: Power BI Custom Visuals

SQL Server 2016 – CTP 3.3

It was a surprise to see that they have released CTP 3.3 and most of the updates are around SSRS and SSAS Tabular.

It is great to see that now as per the visual above you can add your own favorite reports to your SSRS view of the world. Which I think is something that is so simple, but at the same time so valuable.

Along with this is the details and updates for SSAS Tabular.

It is really good to see that you can now create calculated columns in Direct Query mode. As well as applying Row Level security in Direct Query mode also. As I know personally in the past I did not implement Direct Query mode, due to the limitations, which now they have resolved.

It is good to see that they are adding a lot of updates and features for Business Intelligence to SQL Server 2016.

You can find details around SQL Server 2016 CTP3.3 here: Access your favorite KPIs and reports with SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.3

And then if you want to find out the details around SSAS Tabular you can find that here: What’s new for SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services in CTP3.3

SQL Server 2016 – eBook

This is an update from the original eBook, and there is a lot of great content in here, especially if you are not fully aware of what is coming in SQL Server 2016.

There are two versions for desktop and mobile.

You can find information about the eBook here: Free eBook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2016: Mission-Critical Applications, Deeper Insights, Hyperscale Cloud, Preview 2

SQL Server 2016 – R

As you can see above R has come a long way, and is a great tool to use if you have the specific requirement.

The screenshot above was from a presentation by Jen Underwood. And there is some really valuable information in this slide deck.

If this is something of interest to you, you can view the slide deck here: Microsoft R Server and SQL Server R Services