Years ago, I wrote a blog about how, with some code wizardry, you can create heat maps with Reporting Services. Moving to SSRS 2016, you don’t have to do this anymore thanks to the new Treemap chart type!
Speaking of new charts, SSRS also adds a Sunburst chart.
As I said in the “Microsoft Unveils BI Roadmap” blog, SSRS will play an important role of the on-premises BI portal. With this post, I’ll start covering the new SSRS 2016 features. One of the Power BI features announced at the PASS Summit was the forthcoming integration between SSRS 2016 and Power BI that will allow users to pin SSRS report items to Power BI dashboards. You can test pining reports items to Power BI with SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.0 and later. The newly released CTP 3.2 also features the new sleek SSRS portal (we’ve come a long way!). The items you can pin currently include charts, gauge panels, maps, and images. Pinning a report item takes a few clicks:
And, the report item is pinned to the dashboard as a regular tile. You can click the tile to navigate back to the SSRS report.
As you can see, Power BI is becoming a focal point for cloud hosting of the main MS report artifacts: Power BI reports, Excel reports, and SSRS reports.
To me, Power BI is the most exciting milestone in the Microsoft BI journey since circa 2005, when Microsoft got serious about BI. Power BI changes the way you gain insights from data; it brings you a cloud-hosted, business intelligence and analytics platform that democratizes and opens BI to everyone.
I’m happy to announce my latest (7th) book – Applied Microsoft Power BI. Currently, the one and only book on Power BI. Some people discouraged me to write this one. After all, trying to cover a product that changes every week is like trying to hit a moving target. However, I believe that the product’s fundamentals won’t change and once you grasp them, you can easily add on knowledge as Power BI evolves over time. Because I had to draw a line somewhere, “Applied Microsoft Power BI” covers all features that were announced at the PASS Summit 2015 and that were released by December 2015.
The book has four parts for each of the four user types: information worker, data analyst, pro, and developer. Information workers will learn how to connect to popular cloud services to derive instant insights, create interactive reports and dashboards, and view them in the browser and on the go. Data analysts will discover how to integrate and transform data from virtually everywhere, and then implement sophisticated self-service models. The book teaches BI and IT pros how to establish a trustworthy environment that promotes collaboration and how to implement Power BI-centric solutions for descriptive, real-time, and predictive analytics. Developers will find how to integrate custom applications with Power BI, embed reports, and implement custom visuals to present effectively any data.
The book is making its way slowly through the retail channels but it should be available on Amazon (in both paper and Kindle formats) and with other retailers before the holidays. I’ll drop a note and update the book page once the book is available for purchase. Meanwhile, visit the book page for more information about the book, source code, and a sample chapter (Chapter 1 “Introduction to Power BI”).
I predict that 2016 will be the year of Power BI and I hope that this book will help you bring your data to life!
