A new feature in Power BI®, as of April 2020, really lives up to the Power BI® name in giving users the power of business intelligence. What the Personalized Visuals allows your report readers to do, without the explicit permissions to edit or save, is to change the visualizations, amounts, measures and axis as desired. When enabled, in Power BI Desktop or in Services, users are enabled to manipulate the visualization with any of the visuals that you, as the report developer, have made available.
Some use cases:
· Try a different visualization type to see how it may impact the story
· Change or add a measure
· Change minimum, maximum or average for an amount
· Add or remove legends or tooltips
One of the things that I like about this feature is that it is enabled on a report by report basis. So, if a visual is not intended to be viewed in any other way, then there is still some control over that aspect. Additionally, while users may not have the capabilities to save or edit, they can create Personal Bookmarks for the personalization. In turn, the Personal Bookmark can then be pinned to the dashboard and shared with other users with access to that dashboard. That’s giving our report readers the power to create more insights over the dataset and thereby make business decisions that may not have been previously considered.
How to turn it on:
This is a new feature, so a prerequisite will be to ensure you have the latest version of Power BI Desktop® from the Microsoft Store.
In Power BI Desktop®, it is a two-step process to enable the relevant settings and then to Publish with those settings. The reason that there are two steps to enable this is that we, first, enable the feature in Preview Features and then enable it at the Report Settings for each report where the feature is desired. In other words, we do not necessarily want to open this feature up across the board and for some reports, the changes may only cause more confusion. However, the reports where we want users to have that flexibility to play with the visualizations and see what is possible, let’s let them have it!
1. Preview Features: Under File/ Options and settings/Options/ Preview Features/Personalize visuals:
2. Report Settings: With the visualization open, under File/ Options and settings/Options/Report settings/Allow Report readers to personalize visuals to suit their needs.
3. Publish to Power BI Services
An indication that a visualization can now be personalized is a new icon in the top right corner of the visualization:
Considerations: There are some limitations that exist and, often, that is just how it goes and what we learn to accept and work around as new functionality is added. In this case, formatting changes are not allowed and that goes for both color schemes and resizing. Additionally, changing the title or downloading custom visuals, not provided by the report developer, are not allowed just yet. All and all, this is a fantastic new feature that I am really excited about! It gives our users more Power for their BI interactions. I suspect the nuances of this feature will only grow and be improved upon going forward. Way to go Microsoft®! - Joe Wolf is an ERP Functional Analyst and Business Intelligence Solution Consultant with Main Street Apps.
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