#PowerJanta – Power BI March 2021 Feature Summary

Microsoft launched its Power BI March 2021 Feature Summary last week. Here is my selection of noteworthy highlights in Power BI Desktop.

Reporting

• DirectQuery for PBI datasets and Azure Analysis Services
  • Noteworthy changes here since Dec 2020, you can now connect to PBI dataset from DQ.
  • We can now do Chaining of PBI Datasets, essentially using multiple PBI datasets in one report.
• New Selection Controls in Azure Maps Visual

Analytics

• X-axis constant line for line charts
  • Something that was needed for a long time

Modelling

• New icon for Limited Relationships
  • A Limited Relationship is a relation between 2 different data sources. We can now identify it directly via the icon
• Error Icon Tooltips
  • If you create a measure with an error and save it. It will now show a tooltip displaying that error with a red triangle icon next to that measure.

DAX

• EAGER
  • This is like a more optimized version of IF, it is useful when you have a measure in the condition as well expression part. Check the example below.
  • Here [Total Sales] or [Last Month Sales] will be evaluated 2 or 3 times, once in the condition and then again in the TorF expression.
  • EAGER avoids these evaluations thus enhancing the performance. But, MS recommends that one should not simply use this instead of IF unless one has a specific requirement or performance issues.

Sales = IF ( [Total Sales] > [Last Month Sales], [Total Sales], [Last Month Sales]-[Total Sales] )

• CALCULATE
  • This is something that we all have been waiting for.
  • Remember the time when you wanted a sum based on two filters and thought of using CALCULATE but ended up writing a lot more using FILTER() and ALL()
  • Now you can simply do it using CALCULATE. Whether this change will affect the DAX lineage in any is something we will have to wait and watch.

Old Way:

FilteredSales =
     CALCULATE(
          Sales[Sales Amount],
          FILTER(
             ALL( 'Product'[Color], 'Product'[Style]),
             'Product'[Color]="Red" ||
             'Product'[Style]="W"
          )
     )

New Way:

FilteredSales =
     CALCULATE(
          Sales[Sales Amount],
          Product[Color] = "Red" ||
          Product[Style] = "W"
     )

If you like this content or want me to stress on something, feel free to reach out to me at me@saurabha.com with your comments, suggestions and feedback.

Check out my previous post titled #PowerJanta – Power BI February 2021 Feature Summary. To know more about #PowerJanta, click here.

Image Credits: Microsoft’s Official Power BI March 2021 Feature Summary.