The most exciting of which is our Export to PDF feature which is geared towards our 1 feature request on UserVoice, printing in Power BI Desktop. We also have an exciting update for data scientists and statisticians with our new Python integration. Once you select Export to PDF, we will start generating the PDF. Once the PDF has been created, it will open in your default PDF viewer, which in my case is Microsoft Edge. From there you can save it wherever you like, email it as an attachment, or print it! Currently export to PDF is only supported in Power BI Desktop. In the Power BI service, you can still use the normal print option that is available. Watch the following video to learn more about export to PDF: If you are using bookmarks extensively, you like have sets of bookmarks with different purposes. For example, you may have different bookmarks per organizational division using your report, or perhaps you have a set of bookmarks for navigation and several sets of bookmarks for different presentations. Bookmark grouping lets you collect a set of bookmarks together and give it a name. Each group can be expanded and collapsed for easy viewing. To create a bookmark group, click the first bookmark of the group and then ctrl+click the other bookmarks you want to group with it. If you decide later you don't want that group anymore, just use Ungroup to stop grouping that set of bookmarks. When you use View to play a bookmark group, it will only include the bookmarks in that group. Playing from a bookmark at the root level, such as Default View in this example, will still play through all bookmarks in your pane. Watch the following video to learn more about bookmark groups: Last month we had a major update for theming that added support for the remaining visuals properties and page level background and wallpaper colors. At this point, we are happy enough with our level of theming support across report pages that we are making theming generally available. This means you can start using it without needed to enable it through the Options dialog. And for those wondering, yes, that means it will be in our next update of Power BI Desktop for Report Server! Thank you to everyone who has given us feedback during our preview period for theming, and keep the feedback coming! We plan to continue improving the feature and finding ways to make it easier for you to quickly format your reports. If you are using the list slicer, you can now add a restatement, similar to the restatement in the dropdown slicer, to the slicer header through an option in the Slicer header card in the formatting pane. We have a new type of conditional formatting for table and matrix this month, format by field value. Format by field value will let you use a measure or column that specifies a color, either through a hex code or name and applies that color to the background or font color. For example, each product in my model has a color. With this feature all I have to do is pick to format that color by the color name. And then in the dialog, pick to format by Field value. The dialog defaults to the color column with First for summarization. Another great use case for this is to set up a DAX calculation based on your business logic that outputs different hex codes. You can then format by that calculation without having to worry about creating a bunch of rules in the conditional formatting dialog. For example, you could use a switch statement to create your KPI… … pick to conditionally format by that measure… … and see the results in your table or matrix. Watch the following video to learn more about conditional formatting by value: We are excited to announce that Python, a programming language widely used by statisticians, data scientists, and data analysts, is now integrated into Power BI Desktop. Once you enable the feature in the preview settings, you can use Python to do data cleansing, analysis, and visualization. The first integration experience we added is the ability to run Python scripts directly in Power BI Desktop to create your data model. The Python integration in the Query Editor lets you perform data cleansing using Python and perform advanced data shaping and analytics in your data, including completion of missing data, predictions, and clustering, just to name a few. Lastly, you can use Python to create new visuals on your report. Just like R visuals, the Python visuals will update with data refreshes and cross-filtering. However, the visual itself is not interactive. This allows for better matching in cases involving spelling-correction, plurals, and punctuation. You can now pick data categories for measures. This means you can do things like use measures to dynamically create URLs and mark the data category as a Web URL. This is especially useful if you want to link off to other Power BI reports with. Another great use case for this feature is to create DAX measures to create interesting insights such as sparklines using SVG images. These actually snuck into the July release, so you might have already noticed them! The Column Chart with Variance custom visual by 3AG Systems allows you to use multiple measures to create overlapping column charts with a variance chart positioned directly above. This visual is geared towards showing actual, forecast, planned, and previous year data. Watch the following video to learn more about 3AG Systems - Column Chart with Variance: The Scatter Chart custom visual by Akvelon allows you to view compare your different metrics with the x- and y-axes coordinates, point size, and saturation. It also supports rectangle selection for cross-highlighting other visuals on your report page. The visual also supports drilling, constant lines on both axes, and various formatting options. Watch the following video to learn more about the Scatter Chart by Akvelon custom visual: The Small Multiples Line Chart by Daniel Marsh-Patrick allows you to display multiple line charts across the values of a category using the same scale and axes. This makes it a lot easier to compare the trends across all values being compared. The visual also lets you control the labels, the number of multiples per row and the background shading. Watch the following video to learn more about the Small Multiples Line Chart custom visual: The Add Natural Language Summaries for BI custom visual by Arria NLG allows you to add narratives for the data you are displaying in your report. The visual will generate natural languages that explains the most important insights and key drivers in your data. Watch the following video to learn more about the Add Natural Language Summaries for BI custom visual: The Pivot Slicer custom visual goes beyond the built-in slicers, letting you dynamically pivot the slicer based on any combination of categorical data types, numerical data attributes, and linked data items. Some use cases for this slicer include stacking multiple slicers in a single compact visual, exploring data rankings resulting from weighted combinations of numerical attributes, and navigating the link structure of item hierarchies and networks. Items of interest can be pinned from any view for comparison of attribute values, link weights and linked items. It enables you to create Import- or DirectQuery-based reports in Power BI against your data stored in Spark clusters. Coming soon Last month, I introduced a new section to my blog where I give you a glimpse of some of the things we are actively working on in the Power BI Desktop. This month, I wanted to share a little bit more about what our next update will be for our matrix visual: expand and collapse options for row headers. This feature was included in one of our demos at the Microsoft Business Application Summit, if you want to. We are also actively working on a major extension to our scatter chart visual. We hope that you enjoy these updates and continue sending us your feedback.
