What a month it’s been… Some might say, that this is the best month, and – I think – without any doubts the best year for Power BI. Usually, monthly updates are something I wait for with a reasonable level of excitement 🙂 However, this month, they almost got overshadowed by the avalanche of announcements from the MS Build conference. The number of updates hitting the Power BI realm was unprecedented, and it’s totally understandable if you felt a bit overwhelmed. But let’s not forget the importance of the regular updates amidst all the excitement.

Now, I’d love to set aside all the amazing things we learned from the MS Build conference and focus solely on the May 2023 updates. But there’s one feature I just have to highlight for two reasons: it was highly anticipated by pro developers, and it’s already here! I’m talking about the Power BI Integration with Git.

Power BI Integration with Git

1. Use Power BI Desktop to save our report as *.pbip (Power BI Project) file, instead of standard *.pbix.
2. Go to Workspace Settings, and link your workspace with Azure DevOps repo.

Once you’ve done that, you can use Visual Studio Code to track any changes in your Power BI Projects while you’re busy creating reports in Power BI Desktop. It’s the same seamless experience when you’re working in Power BI Service. Whenever you make changes to a report or dataset, you’ll see a nifty summary from Azure DevOps, just like the one below:

  

But wait, there’s more! When you make changes in Power BI Service, you probably want your locally saved Power BI Project to be in sync as well. All you need to do is fire up Visual Studio Code again, make a pull request to your repo, and update your Power BI Project file within your local environment.

Isn’t that awesome? I’ve already enabled this feature on two workspaces that house some critical reports. Once I’ve put it through its paces with proper testing, I’ll create a separate article dedicated to this fantastic feature only. So, stay tuned!

Now, let’s dive into the other features from the May 2023 release that caught my eye. I’ll focus on the ones I find most interesting:

1. Power BI Direct Lake mode

You’re probably familiar with the two data connection types in Power BI: Import Mode and Direct Query. There’s also Live Connection, but that’s a story for another day. Import Mode and Direct Query have their pros and cons. Import Mode gives us better report performance but requires data duplication into the Power BI Model. There are also dataset size limits, corresponding to Capacity size. On the other hand, Direct Query connects directly to the data source, avoiding data duplication. This allows us to work with large data models, but we need to be ready for much lower performance of our report.

With announcement of Microsoft Fabrics, we have a new connection type available when we work with Data Lake. Direct Lake mode allows us to connect Power BI report directly to Data Lake, with the performance on par with Import Mode. It’s like having the best of both worlds—stellar performance without sacrificing data integrity.

To fully embrace this new mode, we need to shift our mindset a bit. Whenever we work with the Data Lake, Direct Lake Mode becomes the go-to strategy, as one of the core goals of Microsoft Fabric is to break down silos and ensure everyone works on the same copy of the data.

2. General availability of Hybrid Tables

If you haven’t had a chance to test this feature while it was still in Preview, I highly recommend checking it out now. Hybrid tables allow you to have a single Fact Table in your data model, working with three different refresh policies:

1. Archived Data – You may specify a chunk of your data, that is loaded to the model once, and not refreshed anymore.
2. Incremental Refresh – Another (ideally smaller) chunk of data can be refreshed incrementally.
3. Direct Query – Real time data available in your report.

1. Current Day data is accessible using Direct Query mode.
2. Current Month data (excluding current day) is imported to our model using Incremental Refresh.
3. The remaining portion of the data also works in Import Mode but is no longer refreshed after being loaded.

Similar to Direct Lake Mode, Hybrid Tables allow us to leverage the benefits of both Import Mode and Direct Query, especially in scenarios where working with Data Lake isn’t feasible. Direct Query will perform swiftly, pulling only one day’s worth of data. Import Mode refreshes will be speedy too, thanks to the smaller data volume enabled by Incremental Refresh.

Sure, it requires a more intricate design process, but trust me, the effort is well worth it.

3. Wait… What’s your name again?

• Power BI Free user license has been renamed to Microsoft Fabric Free user license. This change primarily affects those responsible for licensing within their organization. As you may know, any user working with Power BI must be licensed, therefore, if you are not working in the company provisioning Power BI Pro or Microsoft 365 E5 license to all users, you might be in need to request a Free license. So, it’s good to know what you should ask for.
• Another Update is related to Data Hub in Power BI Service, which is now renamed to OneLake Data Hub. The name change itself might not be groundbreaking, but it serves a purpose. Since Power BI is now part of Microsoft Fabric, it’s essential to recognize that any Fabric item we create stores data in the Data Lake. Whether you’re a Data Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Steward, or Data Analyst, everyone works on the same unified copy of the data.
• And one more thing. Power BI Administrator role is about to be renamed to Fabric Administrator. It’s a bit too soon to clarify the exact impact of the change. For now, let’s look at it as a cosmetic change.