MSBI Tutor

Power BI tenant migrations have shifted from a niche topic to a regular field conversation, usually triggered by an acquisition, divestment, data residency requirement, or overdue modernisation. This post complements the official Microsoft Learn documentation on Power BI tenant migration patterns and strategies . While the documentation covers the end-to-end process, this post focuses on how to decide if a tenant migration is the right choice—and the trade-offs to evaluate before committing. Across most customer engagements, one principle seems to hold true: tenant migration is typically a trade-off between potential gains and added complexity. This post covers common triggers, migration types, key risks, and scenarios where the benefits may justify the effort. The goal is to help you weigh that trade-off before the project gathers momentum of its own Why we are seeing more tenant migration requests Over the past year, there has been an uptick in tenant migration conversations. Most fa...

Getting data is the starting point of almost every Power BI workflow. It’s where users connect to their data, explore what’s available, and begin shaping it for analysis. As a joint effort between the Data Integration and Power BI teams, we are introducing the Preview of the new Power Query Get Data experience in Power BI Desktop —a completely redesigned way to help you discover and connect to your data faster.  Why we built a new Get Data experience? Over time, the number of connectors and data sources in Power BI has grown significantly. While this brings flexibility, it also introduces friction—especially when users are trying to quickly find the right data source or understand how to get started. At the same time, we’ve been evolving Power Query across Fabric experiences. This created an opportunity to rethink the Get Data flow end-to-end and align experiences across Desktop, Fabric, and beyond. The result is a modernized experience built on three key principles: Faster discove...

Outbound Access Protection (OAP) is a workspace-level network security and governance feature that blocks outbound traffic from a workspace by default and lets you allow only the destinations you explicitly trust. With this preview, you can now extend OAP to semantic models. Power BI reports aren't part of this preview yet; report support is coming in a separate announcement soon. Outbound data movement from semantic models Semantic model connections can cross workspace boundaries and can pull data from cloud and on-premises sources, including destinations that fall outside your organization's data boundary. Composite semantic models (models combining tables from multiple sources) can also send data from one source to another, when pushing filter values to a table in DirectQuery mode, as depicted in the diagram example. The relationship between Table A and Table B might have been created unintentionally. The query does not have to return meaningful results. The point is that va...

Semantic model settings pane (Preview) The semantic model settings experience has been refreshed. The redesigned settings pane, aligned with the modern Fabric look and feel is now available.  Figure: The new semantic model settings pane, opened in context next to the workspace. Why it matters The settings page has served its purpose well, but it requires navigating away from whatever you were doing. The new settings pane keeps you in context—your workspace, items, and scroll position stay right where you left them. It opens instantly, with no page load and no navigation away from your model. When you’re done, select anywhere outside the pane to close it. Equally important, the settings pane is designed for long lists of settings that fit poorly with long scrollable pages. Related sections are now grouped into collapsible regions, making navigation easier. The search feature also saves time. If you can't find the refresh history instantly, type ‘re’ in the search box and pick View R...