In September 2018, Microsoft had launched the public preview of a global search in its Power BI solution, a feature that allows users to easily search across all the content they have access to within their organization. Since its release, there have been several users leveraging this feature to discover and navigate to their data.
However, the present experience of performing lacks a slight intuitive touch in the Power BI service; it always asks the users to first navigate to Home and then use the search box.
Microsoft took note of the issue and from this month onwards decided to do away with it.
A new, refurbished search experience that lets users look for reports, dashboards, apps, and workspaces from any page in the product comes into existence. Now the global search has truly gone global!
From now on the global search option will be located in the top header of the Power BI service and by default, the search box will be in the minimized state and will only expand if it is clicked or tabbed inside the box.
What is Zero-query: Recent
When the search box is expanded for the first time, the user will be able to see the last five most recently visited artifacts. This is called the “zero-query” experience.
Once a keyword is typed in and navigated to a search result, that result will then become the most recent item. The feature provides the user with a quick way to navigate to the content that was searched for before.
The search algorithm has also undergone a revamping to suggest results based on the previous activity in the Power BI service. Global search option will be personalized now; surfacing the content that was looked for the most in the top results.
A user can have up to a maximum of five Recents show up in the zero-query experience at any given time. Also remember that datasets, dataflows, and workbooks are not currently supported in the search results.
If the user wants to see more results for the keyword terms, a new search results page has been added too. On this page, one will find a list of the content that matches the keyword term and additional metadata such as type and owner.
These results will also be organized by relevance. Microsoft confirmed that it will be available for all Power BI users by March 16, 2020.
Overhauled Power BI mobile experience
Microsoft this month had rolled out updates for its Power BI mobile experience. The organization has sent out separate updates for the iOS and Android versions of the app. However, both releases come with the same modification.
Now, for Power BI users on Android and iOS, Microsoft says that it has incorporated a new tool for selecting multiple data points on a report page.
They said that when the multi-select option is turned on, each data point the user selects/taps is added to the other selected data points, with the collective results automatically highlighted in all the visuals on the page. For the multi-select mode to work the user needs to go to the app settings page.
The company also confirms that it has added an iOS-specific change. Explicitly, Power BI on Apple’s platform now has a choice for docking to the reporter footer at the bottom of the report page. To do this, the user needs to turn on the toggle “Docked report footer” in-app settings page.
The Power BI feature has undergone quite a few updates which show that Microsoft does listen to its users’ feedback. One can only expect many more exciting changes and features that can arrive shortly owing to the experts at the Microsoft tech labs.
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Author’s bio:
Mohona is a Content Writer for the Marketing team in AhaApps since 2019. When she is not busy attending to her creative, technical side, she likes to binge on sitcoms on Netflix. She loves writing poems and reading short stories when she wants to break away from the humdrum of life.