Power BI Udpates February 2025
With carefully designed reports, you can get complete insight into your business data with just a few visualizations.
Power BI continues to evolve with new features that enhance data exploration, reporting flexibility, and performance. This month’s updates bring Copilot support to iPads and Android tablets, enabling AI-driven insights on more devices. Conditional formatting for visual calculations gives users greater control over data presentation, while performance improvements in Direct Lake mode significantly speed up modeling tasks. Let’s dive into the details of these enhancements and how they can improve your Power BI experience.
Copilot and AI
Reporting
Modeling
Copilot in the Power BI mobile apps: now available on iPads and Android tablets (Preview)
Microsoft has extended Copilot’s capabilities in Power BI Mobile apps to iPads and Android tablets, making AI-driven data analysis even more accessible. Previously available on mobile phones, Copilot now enables users on larger devices to quickly analyze data, gain insights, and make informed decisions on the go.
Using Copilot in the Power BI Mobile app is simple: just tap the Copilot button in the report header (for reports that meet Copilot requirements). From there, users can request summaries, uncover insights, and refine their analysis with suggested queries. The ability to copy, share, and interact with responses ensures a seamless data exploration experience, whether in a meeting or on the move.
Conditional formatting support for visual calculations (Preview)
Responding to user requests, Microsoft has now enabled conditional formatting for visual calculations in Power BI. This update allows users to apply formatting rules directly to calculated columns and measures within visuals, offering more customization and dynamic insights.
A new section in the conditional formatting dialog now displays all data available in the visual, including hidden fields, columns, measures, and visual calculations. This means users can set up formatting rules based on calculated values, enhancing readability and highlighting key trends.
For example, if a report visualizes sales by quarter, users can now apply conditional formatting based on a visual calculation that compares each quarter to the first one. Whether formatting a measure or a visual calculation itself, this feature provides greater flexibility in how data is presented.
Live edit of semantic models in Direct Lake mode with Power BI Desktop – updates (Preview)
Performance improvements continue in Power BI Desktop, particularly for live editing of semantic models in Direct Lake mode. The latest update brings a 50% increase in modeling performance, significantly reducing the time required for each modeling change.
Users working with Direct Lake semantic models will benefit from faster updates and a smoother experience when refining their data models. More details on requirements, considerations, and limitations are available in Microsoft's documentation. Feedback on this feature remains essential, with Microsoft encouraging users to share their experiences through their feedback channels.
