Microsoft will release an updated version of its Power BI analytics service on 24 July with new features and capabilities.
The new set of business-intelligence tools will replace the company’s existing Power BI for Office 365 service.
The company said Power BI Desktop, currently known in preview as the Power BI Designer, offers a free-form canvas for drag-and-drop exploration of data and a library of interactive visualisations. It streamlines report creation and publishing to the Power BI service.
Enhancements to the Power BI Desktop include new visualisations including matrix, area, waterfall, and donut charts; and new visualisation formatting like color setting, titles, labels, and legends.
It will also feature new data source support with Zendesk, Intuit Quickbooks Online, AppFigures, GitHub, Twilio, and SweetIQ; direct connection to SQL Server analysis services tabular models for data exploration.
Microsoft vice president for business intelligence products group James Phillips said in a blog post, "We believe Power BI is, by a very wide margin, the most powerful business analytics SaaS service.
"And yet even the most non-technical of business users can sign up in five seconds, and gain insights from their business data in less than five minutes with no assistance, from anyone."
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A new Power BI mobile app for Android phone adds to the existing mobile support for iPhone, iPad, and Windows devices.
Microsoft said the app allows users to monitor and access their business data anywhere, anytime.
