Here is my weekly BI RoundUp, it is a day late but I thought there might be more announcements from SQL Pass, so decided to delay it by one day. So here are this week’s updates.

Power BI – Power BI Report Server GA Update

With SQL Pass, there has been an announcement that you can now download and either update or install the Generally Available Power BI Report Server. There are some amazing new capabilities highlighted below.

  • Scheduled Refresh supported for data sources.
    • You can also schedule the refresh as often as you like.
    • As well as have multiple refresh schedules.
  • The size of the PBIX has been increased to 2GB
  • Additional support for DirectQuery for the following sources:
    • SQL Server Analysis Services
    • SQL Server
      – Azure SQL Database
      -Oracle
    • Teradata
    • SAP HANA
    • SAP BW
  • If you have a Shared Dataset in Reporting Services, you can now connect to this using the OData source in Power BI.
  • URL Report Filtering is now also available, which is very similar to the Power BI Service Implementation
  • Updates to the REST APIs for Power BI Report Server which can access folders, reports, KPIs, data sources, datasets, refresh plans, subscriptions, and more

You can find the download location and blog post here: New version of Power BI Report Server now available

Power BI – Announcements from SQL Pass


From the SQL Pass there are some updates coming to the Gateway. As you can see above there will now be the capability for Single Sign-On for Row Level Security which is great.

As well as high availability for the Gateways, I know that this is something larger enterprises, as well as organizations have been looking for to ensure that their data is always up to date. From the people that I follow on twitter this should be available very soon (Possibly Mid-Nov 2017)

As you can see above the capability to share specific items from an App Workspace is coming to Power BI.

Amazing, coming soon to Power BI will be the capability to share to an external email address or B2B (Business to Business). This will really be good when wanting to leverage your existing Power BI reports to external customers.

Power BI – Help Improve Power BI

There is a quick Survey where I was asked some questions with regards to Power BI. It is one page long, so it does not take a lot of time.

Along with this there is the opportunity to win 3 $50 gift cards, if you wish to leave your name and email address.

Here are the details here: Help Improve Power BI Desktop

Power BI – How Data will influence the Future of Story Telling

This is a great article in which they go on to explain how in the future a lot of storytelling will be backed by data. And how Microsoft Power BI is enabling people now to tell their story in an easy and meaningful way.

You can read all about it here: How Data will Influence the Future of Storytelling