July 2025 Updates for Power BI

As Power BI turns 10, the software continues to improve with changes coming thick and fast.  There appears to be no sign of abatement.  Features this month include updated connections to Microsoft 365, smarter Copilot features and the integration of reporting through PBIRS and SQL Server 2025.

The full list of updates is as follows:

General

• Expanded data sharing with M365
• PBIRS will consolidate On-Premises Reporting Services from SQL Server 2025

Copilot and AI

• Improvements to standalone Copilot answers
• Limit Copilot search to “prepped” content
• Verified answers from Copilot search
• AI Data Schema: updates (Preview)
• Customised instructions for summaries through subscriptions
• Narrative visual available in subscription snapshot and export
• Textual responses for Data inquiries

Reporting

• New Power BI App Navigation Menu in Teams
• Influencing sort for visual calculations (Preview)
• Field parameters (Generally Available)
• Organisational themes (Preview)
• Improvements to Pie and Donut charts

Modelling

• Direct Lake in Desktop from Mirrored and SQL databases
• DAX query view and web modelling view switcher

Data Connectivity

• Support for PQO Gateway Connections for Paginated Reports
• Snowflake connector implementation 2.0 (Generally Available)
• New Google BigQuery (Microsoft Entra ID) connector implementation (Preview)
• New Databricks connector implementation (Preview)
• Connect to Netezza database with the user-installed ODBC driver (Preview)
• PostgreSQL connector adds support for Microsoft Entra ID authentication

Mobile

• Home in the Power BI mobile app has been reorganised

Developers and APIs

• Power BI Enhanced Report format (PBIR) update

Visualisations

• Stacked Bar chart with Line by JTA: a data scientist’s visualisation tool
• Linear Gauge by Powerviz
• Drill Down Shape Map PRO by ZoomCharts
• Inforiver Premium Table: high-performance, formatted and scalable table visual for Power BI
• Inforiver Analytics+ 4.7: 100+ Charts, Gantt, KPI Cards and Tables.

As always, we'll be detailing these updates in our August newsletter.  Please remember we have virtual / online training in Power BI which you can find out more about here.  If you are not already a subscriber, why not sign up at the bottom of any SumProduct web page?  And don't forget to download the latest version of Power BI Desktop here too.