Deprecation of Legacy Power BI Apps!

In case you missed the official blog post 2 months ago, I suggest you read my blog post :)

Or if you want you can refer to the official blog here: Announcing the retirement of legacy Power BI Apps (pre-audiences).

Already on March 6, 2023(!), Power BI apps with multiple audiences went Generally Available.

TL;DR

If you still have a pre-audience app, that is: an app that was created before app audiences where a thing, you can should upgrade your app now. Support from Microsoft will stop after April 30.

One other way you could also do the upgrade, is to unpublish your app and create the app again.

N.B. Be aware that:

• You will get a different URL (AppID) 
• Any custom changes that users did are gone, so e.g. personal bookmarks and comments

💡 Pro Tip: Only unpublish an app if you need to remove it! 

What does this actually mean?

Legacy apps will continue to work, also after May 1st. But technical support from Microsoft will stop after this date. So I do think it is a wise step to upgrade old apps.

Why do I want to upgrade?

• Content Management: In the new Power BI apps with audiences, you can have to add content via the Update app feature by navigating to the Content tab and clicking Add content. In the legacy app you used to include content by using the app toggle in the workspace. This toggle will not be supported anymore, although it is still shown in the workspace.
  
  

• Audiences: You can use different audiences for separate authorizations to a subsection of reports from the workspace. If you are using the default access request method, you also need to provide an audience group in the drop-down button with a pending access request before you can approve it.
• Content visibility: By default, all newly added content to an already published app is marked as invisible. App authors must manually unhide content for each audience group. 

More information on publishing apps, using audiences or current limitations can be found here: Publish an app in Power BI.

Upgrade process

In case you still have the legacy app, or if you haven't created an app in a workspace, the workspace might still show the old toggle button:

After you upgarde or create an (new) app, it will show either Yes, No or blank depending on the eligibility of the item to be in an app. That's because only Power BI items can be included in an app.

After you click upgrade, you'll get a notice the app was updated.

Be aware that after the upgrade your app is created withouth any audiences. So be sure to check the authorizations and shared content in the upgraded app.

Other updates to apps

Other recent updates to apps where announced here:

• The number of audiences has been increased (from 10) to 25
• You can now enable custom messaging for handling app access requests
• At the Fabric Community Conference in Las Vegas: Multiple apps per workspace coming soon!

Governance & Administration - Tenant Settings: Searching

With all the Fabric announcements in the last months, some of the Admin announcements might have slipped through. As you might know, the Admin part of Fabric is dear to my heart. I've posted about it earlier here, here, here, and here, to name a few 😀.

So in the next weeks I am going to highlight a few things with short, informative posts.

You can find other posts in the series here:

• Fabric (Tenant Settings) API's
• Tenant settings: Visual Cues

Governance & Administration - Tenant Settings: Visual Cues

With all the Fabric announcements in the last months, some of the Admin announcements might have slipped through. As you might know, the Admin part of Fabric is dear to my heart. I've posted about it earlier here, here, here, and here, to name a few 😀.

So in the next weeks I am going to highlight a few things with short, informative posts.

You can find other posts in the series here:

• Fabric (Tenant Settings) API's
• Tenant Settings: Searching
  

Governance & Administration - Fabric (Tenant Settings) API's

With all the Fabric announcements in the last months, some of the Admin announcements might have slipped through. As you might know, the Admin part of Fabric is dear to my heart. I've posted about it earlier here, here, here, and here, to name a few 😀.

So in the next weeks I am going to highlight a few things with short, informative posts.

This first post in the series is focused on the Tenant settings API and other Fabric API's available at the time of writing.

You can find other posts in the series here:

• Tenant Settings: Visual Cues
• Tenant Settings: Searching

Get Tenant Settings API

Obviously, to use the Get Tenant Settings API you need to have at least Tenant.Read.All permissions, or have the Fabric Administrator role (or higher) in Azure.

There are a few use cases I see for getting these settings exported with this API:

• Documentation purposes when you have multiple Fabric Administrators
• Distributing tenant settings to users, and explaining why we (as a team of Administrators/within the Center of Excellence) made certain choices
• Get notified of the changes in the tenant settings, without having to use Microsoft Defender or M365 Security & Compliance center like mentioned here

Get Capacities Tenant Settings Overrides

With the introduction of Fabric, there has also been the ability to have capacity admins override certain tenant settings. 

Example of a tenant setting that can be delegated

Some settings in the Admin portal are automatically delegated to capacity admins, like shown above. 

Other Fabric API's

Next to the API's on the tenant settings, there are already a lot more API's in the Admin section for you to check out, for example to handle workspaces, users, domains, and items as a Fabric Admin.

Next to that, so not as a Fabric Admin, you can also interact with Lakehouse tables, and there's a bunch of Core API's, for example to use Git or OneLake Shortcuts.

Preview note

Please note that at the time of writing this post, most of the API's are still in preview and subject to change.

Except for the Get Tenant Settings API, all the API's are currently in preview:

The Conference Season Has Begun!

The conference season is kicking off again! I have quite some events and sessions already lined up for the next months, so I though I'll update you here.

First up is Data Community Day Austria, in Vienna. I'm actually at Schiphol Airport now, waiting to board my plane 😀 I'm presenting a new session on Direct Lake in Microsoft Fabric.

In March, 7-9, the Dutch Power BI Gebruikersdagen are in Utrecht and I'm presenting a session on Saturday: How to use Power BI External Tools.

After that is SQLBits, which I'm skipping this year. MVP Summit is unfortunately also online for me this year, but that has a very good reason...

Because, in the last week of March the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference is happening in Las Vegas, and I'm delighted and excited to say I am presenting 2 sessions there!
The first session is with Ulrich Christ, Program Manager Azure Data Factory at Microsoft, and we are going to talk about Connecting to SAP Data with Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric.
Because the second session is still in the works I can't share any details yet, so you'll just have to wait a bit longer for that.

After that, there's also DataGrillen in Lingen, Germany on May 16 & 17. I'm presenting a session dear to my heart: Fabric Admin in a Day. Do check the amazing 2-day schedule on their site. It's also happening during the Kievelinge Fest, which happens the weekend right after DataGrillen, how convenient... 😁

I'm very excited for the coming months and hope to see many of you there, meeting up with old friends and making new ones! 💛