Power Query Updates in Power BI Desktop June 2021 Release
Power BI Desktop
The Power BI Desktop June 2021 Release contains many Power Query-related updates, summarized below for easy reference. To view the full list of feature releases in Power BI Desktop June 2021, read the full Power BI blog post here.
Assemble Views (new connector)
We are excited to announce the release of the Assemble Views connector in Power BI Desktop. Here’s more about the connector from the Assemble Views team:
“Assemble Insight is part of the Autodesk Construction Solutions product family, which enables users to view and leverage building information models (BIM) in the cloud. Allowing users to condition their models using advanced filtering to aggregate, add, and update fields within the model. This conditioning can then be saved as views, relevant to users with various roles on the project.
The Assemble Views Power Query connector allows users to extract this model data in pre-packaged datasets (views). Once imported into Power BI, users can employ these views using the analytics tools available to create complex workflows and reports. Data trends can be quickly identified by including a date parameter that specifies the point in time for which to load the data”
BQE Core (new connector)
We are also excited to announce the release of the BQE Core connector in Power BI Desktop. Here’s more about the connector from the BQE Core team:
“BQE CORE is proud to offer its Power BI connector directly through the Microsoft Power BI app. This connector gives users the ability to seamlessly import their raw CORE data into the Power BI application, as well as transform it into meaningful, centralized, visual and interactive insights for their business. While the connector was previously offered as a manual integration through our training department, this streamlined installation from the Power BI app will help CORE customers create custom dashboards and reports, and ultimately make more informed business decisions.
Visit the Power BI Forum to learn just how powerful this connector really is – and why you can’t afford to be without it!”
SumTotal (new connector)
Our third new connector this month is the release of the SumTotal connector in Power BI Desktop. Here’s more about the connector from the SumTotal team:
“This connector will help to launch SumTotal platform OData APIs as datasets within the Power BI Desktop application”.
Adobe Analytics (updated connector)
We are introducing a new version of the Adobe Analytics connector. The 2.0 connector will use the Adobe Analytics 2.0 API, which you can read more about here. In addition to using the dimensions and metrics of the 2.0 API, this new connector will also support paging data beyond the 50,000 row limit of the existing connector. In the near future, we will be bringing support for exposing Segments as Dimensions in the connector. We appreciate any feedback that you may have.
Anaplan (updated connector)
This connector is no longer considered in “Beta”.
Azure Databricks (updated connector)
This update improves fetch speed for some data layouts.
Cognite Data Fusion (updated connector)
This release contains a bugfix for the “TimeseriesAggregate” function. The list of tags are now escaped using `Uri.EscapeDataString` which fixes a problem if any of the tags contained any special characters.
Dynamics 365 Business Central (updated connector)
Faster and more robust data analysis is key for any modern organization operating its ERP system in the cloud. While Business Central already offers tight integration with Power BI, it relies on web services. This new release enables APIs to be used as richer and more performant data sources for Business Central reports hosted in Power BI.
Customers can now create reports and dashboards using modern Business Central APIs, including the built-in APIs v2.0 provided with Business Central and also any custom APIs created by partners or makers. This gives users access to better and faster data analytics in Power BI while maintaining full backward compatibility. Learn more about Business Central and Power BI integration.
FactSet Analytics (updated connector)
The FactSet Analytics connector has been updated to support caching of calculation results. In case the user doesn’t explicitly specify a “Cached Output Age” value, calculation results are cached for twelve hours by default.
Google BigQuery (updated connector)
We’ve added support for Google Cloud Service Accounts to the Google BigQuery connector. To learn more about Service Accounts for Google Cloud, you can read about them in their documentation here, including how to get the JSON for the key.
Starburst Enterprise (updated connector)
This update contains a renaming of the connector to Starburst Enterprise.
Vessel Insight (updated connector)
New in this version is a Voyage table that provides correlated voyage information to match the Vessel data. Voyage data includes departure and destination ports, voyage history and weather data.
Workplace Analytics (updated connector)
This update adds support for the viva endpoint and contains many other minor bugfixes.
Snowflake (updated connector)
We are adding the highly demanded Custom SQL support for the Snowflake connector. Like the SQL connector, this will let you input a Snowflake native query and then build reports on top of it. This will work with both Import and Direct Query mode.
In the initial version you will need to use fully qualified table names, of the format Database.Schema.Table. For example, in our demo report, we have “select * from DEMO_DB.PUBLIC.DEMO_TABLE”. We are working to improve this customer experience in upcoming versions. You will also need to fill in the ‘Database’ optional parameter. You can see these fields filled in below.
We look forward to your feedback.
Azure Consumption Insights (connector deprecated)
The Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights connector is being deprecated due to ending support from the data source service. This update will remove the connector from the “Get Data” experience in Power BI Desktop, discouraging new connections from being made. Existing connections and reports will continue to work for now. Up-to-date deprecation information can be found in our documentation.
Feedback
The Power Query team is interested in your feedback! Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts.