BI News

By TM

BI News turns business intelligence into clear, actionable insight in minutes.
Each episode breaks down the most important BI updates, trends, tools, and real-world use cases so analysts,

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· Technology

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How many episodes does BI News have?

The podcast currently has 4 episodes available.

BI News episodes:

April 16, 2026 April 13, 2026 - GoodData, Tableau, and Qlik Update Roundup
Only a few vendors published clearly in-window AI/BI feature updates between March 30 and April 13, 2026. The strongest qualifying items came from GoodData, Tableau, and Qlik; the other platforms did not show public, in-window updates that met your filters. (gooddata.com)
Looker
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days. The newest relevant official Looker release-note entries I found are dated March 25, 2026 and earlier, which is outside the requested window. (docs.cloud.google.com)
Power BI
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days. The main monthly Power BI feature summary for the current cycle was published March 15, 2026, and the collaboration/integration page also lists these as March 2026 features rather than April updates. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
Tableau
- April 2026 release: Tableau Next MCP is marked generally available. Tableau says it lets AI agents query Tableau’s analytics engine directly; the hard product fact is that Tableau is exposing MCP-based access in Tableau Next. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Inspector in Slack is in beta. It sends proactive natural-language alerts in Slack DMs after a metric threshold breach and supports follow-up questions. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Concierge gained tighter control over AI answers: semantic model scope/allowlisting and page-filter visibility are GA, while Q&A Calibration is beta. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: The Tableau App for Microsoft 365 is GA for Tableau Cloud and Server, adding dashboard and Pulse embedding into Word and PowerPoint with one-click refresh. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Tableau added BI workflow improvements for Pulse in dashboards: Pulse metrics can now appear in dashboard image exports and subscriptions, and embedded Pulse metrics can respond to dashboard filters. (tableau.com)
Metabase
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days. The latest major release I found is Metabase 59, published March 5, 2026, which is outside the window. (metabase.com)
Sigma
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days. The newest public Sigma “What’s New” entries I found are March 20, 2026 and March 9, 2026, both outside the window. (community.sigmacomputing.com)
Qlik
- April 7, 2026 (technical preview for May 2026, Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows): Qlik added several analyst-facing BI improvements, including inline images in text objects, an image plugin for line charts, scatter-plot plugin support, drag-and-drop column reordering in straight tables, measure-based header coloring, and a new pivot-table exploration menu. This is a technical preview, not a GA cloud release.
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7min
April 09, 2026 March 30, 2026 - Power BI Task Flows and Modeling Updates
I found one clear in-window product update set that fits your filter: Power BI’s March 18, 2026 feature update. For the other platforms, I did not find qualifying analyst-facing AI/BI feature releases published between March 16 and March 30, 2026, or the public items I found were outside the window or were support/maintenance notes rather than feature updates. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
Looker
- No qualifying updates found in the last 14 days. The public Looker release notes surfaced by Google were last updated January 2, 2026, and the visible feature entries were older than this window. (docs.cloud.google.com)
Power BI
- March 18, 2026: Microsoft published the Power BI March 2026 Feature Summary. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- AI: The Copilot pane in Reports and Apps got a UI refresh to match the standalone Copilot experience; Microsoft says functionality is unchanged. This is a UX change, not a new analytic capability. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- AI: The Copilot feedback dialog now lets users attach diagnostics to feedback submissions, which may help support and product triage. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- AI/reporting: The AI Narrative visual can now auto-refresh when slicer selections change, removing the need to manually refresh the narrative after each filter change. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Reporting/workflows: Translytical task flows reached general availability, allowing report users to update records, add data, or trigger workflows from inside reports. Supported writeback targets called out by Microsoft include Fabric SQL databases, warehouses, and lakehouses for files. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Reporting/visual design: Modern visual defaults and theme customization improvements entered preview, adding a new default visual style, updated base theme behavior, and reusable structural colors/page sizing in themes. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Reporting/tables: Custom totals entered preview, letting authors override a table or matrix total’s aggregation at the visual level without changing the underlying DAX measure. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Visualizations: Series label leader lines were added for line charts and related visuals to improve label readability in dense charts. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Reporting/filters: Input slicer now supports conditional formatting for text, icons, borders, backgrounds, and accent bars. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Modeling: Direct Lake in OneLake reached general availability
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6min
March 17, 2026 March 17, 2026 - Mid-March BI Product Updates
Here are the BI- and AI-related feature updates from March 3–17, 2026:

Looker
- Mar 6, 2026: CSV connector enhancements (originally Pro-only) are now generally available to all Looker Studio users, improving data ingestion workflows (releasebot.io)

Power BI
- No qualifying AI or BI feature updates have been published between March 3 and March 17, 2026.

Tableau
(Version 2026.1, released Mar 3, 2026 (tableau.com))
AI features
- AI-assisted Color Palettes: GA in Tableau Desktop when signed into a Tableau Agent-enabled site, enabling natural-language-driven palette generation with contrast/accessibility checks (tableau.com)
- Tableau Agent – Dashboard Narratives (Beta): now open beta in Tableau Cloud, providing AI-generated dashboard overviews and chart-level insights (tableau.com)
- Tableau Pulse – Enhanced Q&A Correlation: GA in Tableau+ Cloud, surfacing statistically grounded metric correlations across data sources with narrative explanations (tableau.com)
- Data Pro: Auto-Generate Semantic Models from Workspaces (Beta): creates semantic layers via natural-language prompts directly from Tableau Next Workspaces (tableau.com)

BI features
- REST API Connector GA in Tableau Server, Desktop, and Prep, allowing direct connection to REST endpoints without custom code (tableau.com)
- Google Looker Connector GA across Cloud, Desktop, and Prep, enabling visualization of governed Looker data in Tableau (tableau.com)
- View Data Model Enhancements: hovering over pills highlights source tables in the data model view for immediate lineage visualization (tableau.com)
- Smart Filter on Table Name: supports exact-name filtering (“T:” syntax) in large data models for faster table selection (tableau.com)
- Image Export Improvements: image downloads and subscriptions now render Visual and Dashboard Extensions and Pulse objects accurately in Cloud (rolling out through March) (tableau.com)
- Rounded Corners: Dashboard and component corner radii can now be set directly in Desktop and Web Authoring for modern layouts (tableau.com)

Metabase
(Metabase 59, Mar 2026)
- Data Studio: introduced an analyst workbench for defining/curating a semantic layer and shaping data tables with SQL or Python transforms, integrating AI-driven code suggestions via Metabot (metabase.com)
- AI SQL generation in Open Source: single-prompt SQL code generation in self-hosted instances via Metabot (metabase.com)
- Dependencies graph: visualize object dependencies and impact before changes to dashboards, queries, or data models (metabase.com)
- Semantic library: publish curated tables and metrics as source-of-truth artifacts with Git sync support (metabase.com)
- Boxplot chart: new visualization type for distribution analysis (metabase.com)

Sigma
(March 6, 2026)
- Scheduled action sequences (Beta): define and run multi-step workflows (notifi
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6min
March 07, 2026 March 7, 2026
In the past two weeks, most BI vendors rolled out significant AI-driven enhancements—ranging from expanded copilots and natural-language capabilities to automated content generation—alongside workflow and visualization improvements. Looker and Pyramid Analytics had no analyst-facing updates in this window.

Looker
- No qualifying release notes or feature updates between February 21 and March 7, 2026.

Power BI (February 2026 update, Desktop/Service v2.151.1052.0 published 02/20/2026)
- AI: Expanded Copilot prompt limit from 500 to 10 000 characters across all surfaces (Standalone, report pane, apps, mobile, embed) to accommodate longer, expressive queries powerbi.microsoft.com
- Reporting: Input Slicer (formerly Text Slicer) reached general availability, letting report viewers type free-form text filters (contains, starts with, etc.) directly in reports ([powerbi.microsoft.com](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-sg/blog/power-bi-february-2026-feature-summary/))
- Reporting: Conversational improvements in Power BI apps, enabling users to ask questions without pre-selecting items and receive app-level summaries of available reporting ([powerbi.microsoft.com](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-sg/blog/power-bi-february-2026-feature-summary/))
- Modeling: Introduced TABLEOF and NAMEOF DAX functions to create safer, rename-resilient references in measures and UDFs ([powerbi.microsoft.com](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-sg/blog/power-bi-february-2026-feature-summary/))
- Other: Fabric Copilot capacity designation setting enabled by default for tenants for unified Copilot usage across Desktop, Pro, and Premium workspaces ([powerbi.microsoft.com](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-sg/blog/power-bi-february-2026-feature-summary/))

Tableau (2026.1 release, rolling out Feb 24–Mar 3, 2026)
- AI & Semantic: Beta of Tableau Next Data Pro’s Auto-Generate Semantic Models from Workspaces via natural-language descriptions ([tableau.com](https://www.tableau.com/new-features))
- AI & Assisted Insights: Beta of Q&A Calibration for validating and tuning agent responses; Beta of Tableau Next Dashboard Summaries for key-driver text summaries; GA of Tableau Pulse’s Enhanced Q&A with custom queries and correlation insights ([tableau.com](https://www.tableau.com/new-features))
- Visualization: GA of Rounded Corners for dashboard objects across Desktop, Web, and Public; GA of AI-assisted Color Palettes to generate accessible swatches via text prompts in Desktop on Agent-enabled sites ([tableau.com](https://www.tableau.com/new-features))
- BI UX: GA of Image Export Improvements for accurate exports of views using Trusted Extensions or Pulse; GA of View Data Model enhancements (hover to highlight source tables); GA of Smart Filter on Table Name in Data pane; GA of Mixed Geometry support in Maps (points/lines/polygons together) ([tableau.com](https://www.tableau.com/new-features))

Metabase (v59 released Mar 05, 2026)
- Semantic & Governance: Introduced Data Studio workbench for shaping and curating semantic layers (transforms in SQL/Python, dependency graph, Library for tables and metrics) ([metabase.com](https://www.metabase.com/releases/metabase-59))
- AI & Code Gen: Metabot add-on for SQL/Python transform code generation; open-source natural-language SQL generation in the SQL editor (prompt-based, Anthropic key required) ([metabase.com](https://www.metabase.com/releases/metabase-59))

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6min

FAQs about BI News:

How many episodes does BI News have?

The podcast currently has 4 episodes available.