Businesses have embraced different dashboards to enable self analytics and make informed decisions on the go. While there are numerous dashboards in the market, Power BI by Microsoft has been deployed by several companies to raise their bar and harness the potential of data for becoming data-driven firms. However, with the increase in the accessibility of data, there is a risk of potential misuse of information while sharing Power BI reports.

Oversharing of data can afflict any enterprise and become the prime reason for their bankruptcy. Data, dashboards, and BI reports shared with other users have two levels of access. Therefore, Microsoft has added new features to protect data and improve the usability of Power BI.

Data Security Capability

The new public preview data protection capability can be utilised by pairing Power BI with Microsoft Information Protection and Microsoft Cloud App Security. This will allow firms to classify and label sensitive data, enforce governance policies, monitor and protect user activity in real-time, and empower security administrators. Data administrators can apply for various sensitivity labels for reports, datasets, and dashboards, to restrict the access of information.

Embracing these features, firms can ensure information protection even after the data is exported from Power BI. Both the Cloud App Security and the Information Protection can collectively, deliver a complete session monitoring and oversight of the data sharing among users.

Azure Synapse Analytics And Power BI Integration

The new Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI can now be linked together to manage warehouses. Users can develop and customise the infrastructure in a single pane to optimise the way information is managed and analysed for unveiling insight. Besides, developers can create semantic models to assist clients in defining KPIs and applying role-based security along with fast in-memory cache. Previously, caches could only be up to 10GB, however, due to the amalgamation of these platforms, users now get enormous storage of 400GB.

Increase in the storage means developers can create large models by leveraging the colossal amount of data. 

AI-Driven Augmented Analytics

Microsoft has included a decomposition tree to carry out the root cause analysis automatically through machine learning capabilities. This feature was suggested by the PowerBI community to streamline the business intelligence for delivering superior user experience. This will be included in both Power BI and Power BI Premium in the November release without the need for any additional purchase.

This will automatically break down the data by different dimensions and variables to visualise the reason behind a high or low KPI. Further, it is now equipped with Automated ML to help nonexperts to build machine learning models for solving real-world business problems. As a result, one would not require data scientists to create reliable machine learning models as it now automates data science activity.

To add more intelligence in Power BI, Microsoft has integrated it with Azure Cognitive Services to manage unstructured data effectively by extracting phrases, scoring sentiment, identifying objects in pictures, and more. Such cognitive service will enhance the data science ability in organisations and boost operational resilience. 

Currently, cognitive services are only available in Power BI Premium and will be added in Power BI desktop.

Integration With Microsoft Teams

Integrating with Microsoft Teams will allow every user to share data without leaving the workspace. Adding Microsoft Team tab in Power BI ameliorates collaborate in projects to achieve shared goals.

Outlook

These inclusions have overhauled Power BI and enriched the business intelligence platform to conduct intensive machine learning tasks, thereby, simplifying the way businesses perform their operations. Armed with the aforementioned capabilities, Power BI will enable businesses to gain a competitive edge over others in the cut-throat technology landscape. With numerous competitors in the dashboard marketplace, these advancements have now differentiated it from the pack.