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New features in the April 2023 Power BI update Part three of a three-part series of blogs
Modern visual tooltips are still officially in preview, but since they're turned on by default we've included them in this update. The update also includes composite models, some new DAX functions and a small change to PowerPoint story styling, but it's the big beasts lined up in preview which are (as always) the real story. New features in the April 2023 Power BI update Modern visual tooltips Other changes introduced in the April 2023 update (this blog) We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

New features in the April 2023 Power BI update

Part three of a three-part series of blogs

Modern visual tooltips are still officially in preview, but since they're turned on by default we've included them in this update. The update also includes composite models, some new DAX functions and a small change to PowerPoint story styling, but it's the big beasts lined up in preview which are (as always) the real story.

New features in the April 2023 Power BI update
Modern visual tooltips
Other changes introduced in the April 2023 update (this blog)

We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

Posted by Andy Brown on 27 April 2023

In this blog

Composite models
New functions in DAX
Styling stories in PowerPoint

Other changes introduced in the April 2023 update

This page lists a number of other small(ish) changes included with this month's update.

Composite models

Do you create Power BI reports based on either of the following data sources?

Data source	Details
SSAS tabular models	Analysis Services data models using SQL Server Analysis Services 2022
Power BI datasets	Shared (published) Power BI datasets using Direct Query

If so, you can now use a feature which was called DirectQuery for Power BI Datasets and Analysis Services during its development, but is now just called Composite models. So when you create a report based on a shared Power BI dataset, for example, which uses DirectQuery to access SQL Server data:

Creating a report based on a Power BI dataset.

And then choose a dataset to connect to:

I've chosen this datset to connect to.

Then you'll then be able to include other data sources in the same report, as well as creating calculated columns.

The rules on security (as well as the limitations on this feature) are complex, and beyond the scope of this blog - see the official Microsoft feature page for more details.

New functions in DAX

Microsoft have introduced two new DAX functions and changed an existing one:

Function	Changes
ORDERBY	You can now choose to order data by a DAX expression, and not just by a column (although previously you could have used an intermediate variable to achieve the same effect anyway).
RANK, ROWNUMBER	These two functions both return the rank for the current context within the specified partition, sorted by the specified order. The difference between RANK and ROWNUMBER is that if there is a tie ROWNUMBER will return an error, whereas RANK will just assign the same rank multiple times.

I have quoted above from the official Microsoft update page for these features. I blogged about the new DAX partition functions last December. These functions are definitely for Power BI gurus only!

Styling stories in PowerPoint

Last month I blogged about the fact that you can now show Power BI reports within PowerPoint. As from this month you can now also put an outline border round any story you've inserted onto a slide: