Jul 12, 20223 min read

All new Power Bi Experience in Excel

Updated: Jul 13, 2022

All new update on July 5 from Microsoft as found in the Power Bi Blog.

Looks really good and after a little time looking below is what I have found, hopefully corporate speak free. Before then the question is why do you need the below?

Why ?

For me it's all about having one version of the truth, getting the source data cleansed, organised, labelled and sorted is key to getting meaningful reports that present data that makes a difference. That's where somebody like me comes in, I spend time with a client through discovery to understand what is important and how they calculate and like their data to look.

So time is spent on the data, building a model that can then be used to build not just one but many reports and this is where we come back to one version of the truth, get it right once in the model and then all reports will show the information based on the same understanding/calculation.

If you need to change something it's changed in the model and all the reports automatically reflect that change, for example a tax rate changes from 10% to 11%, by having one model all reports are changed immediately, no lag, no discrepancies.

The User

Whilst I may spend hours crafting a beautiful looking report it pains me to admit that the user sometimes just wants to see something their way and love working in Excel, hence why both the above and below are important. So knock yourselves out you Excel bunnies.....

Connecting to your data

No change here....

It is really easy to add a Power Bi dataset to Excel as a data source.

From within Excel go to the Data tab
Click on Get Data
Click on From Power Platform
Select From Power Bi

A list of the available datasets appears and again no change here, the way it looks is just the same

Select the data set you want to work with and voila a new screen appears.

This is where it does change

You will notice it has not gone straight to a list of tables, data and measures in the Pivot Table way.

Instead a more visually appealing panel that bears some resemblance to the way you would expect to see the data in Power Bi, especially the use of table names that, hopefully the Power Bi report developer has arranged and named usefully.

From here on it's over to building your Pivot Table in the usual way.

Better Search?

You have always been able to search for either the dataset name, the owner or the workspace, so no great change there.

What I do like though is the ability to see when the dataset was last refreshed and the reports in the Power Bi Service that are linked to the dataset.

It's just that little but more.

View the online reports

I do like this update, the ability to click through to the online report that is connected to the dataset you are viewing.

It's that you can sense check back to something that has already been created and use as a guide or reference for your Excel reporting.

Click and the Power Bi report in the Service will open.

View all the available datasets in the service

And last but not least, it is possible to click through to the data hub in the service and see all datasets that are available to you.

Finally

It's all about having one version of the truth and empowering colleagues to access and interrogate that "truth", using and building reports that will make a difference to the business performance.