Power BI Blog: Optimizing the Ribbon

Welcome back to this week’s edition of the Power BI blog series.  This week, we look at the Optimize tab on the Ribbon.

The Optimize tab on the Ribbon in Power BI Desktop is now available to all – and many don’t realise it.  The Optimize ribbon can help you improve your report authoring experience with three main features: ‘Pause visuals’, ‘Optimization presets’ and the ‘Apply all slicers’ button:

1. Pause visuals can stop visuals from sending queries when you are making changes.  This can speed up your report design process, especially if you are using DirectQuery table storage mode. You can refresh individual visuals or all the visuals on a report page when you are ready
2. Optimization presets lets you apply different report setting combinations to favour either Query Reduction or Interactivity between your visuals with one click.  You can even use the ‘Customize’ option to pick and choose which settings best suits your reporting needs.  ‘Optimization presets’ are particularly useful for large models and DirectQuery reports that require fine-tuning of performance and user experience
3. Apply all slicers button stops slicers from instantly applying their selections when this button is added to a report page.  This will reduce the number of times the other visuals refresh while report consumers are making selections across multiple slicers.

In the meantime, please remember we offer training in Power BI which you can find out more about here.  If you wish to catch up on past articles, you can find all of our past Power BI blogs here.