BI News

May 25, 2026 - BI Updates: AI Controls and Authoring

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:00:00 +0200

I found qualifying analyst-facing updates for most of the requested platforms in the last 14 days (May 11–25, 2026). The activity was concentrated in AI-assisted analysis/building, dashboard/report authoring, and governed sharing or embedding workflows. (docs.cloud.google.com)
Looker
- May 7, 2026: In the Looker 26.8 release notes, Conversational Analytics Advanced Analytics (formerly Code Interpreter) moved to general availability. Looker also made default row/column limits for dashboard tile downloads generally available, so dashboard editors can set defaults and viewers can edit them at download time. (docs.cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Looker added support for querying Explores in Development Mode from Conversational Analytics. (docs.cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Looker listed two preview agent features in 26.8: publishing Conversational Analytics Explore data agents to Gemini Enterprise, and using Conversational Analytics data agents on dashboards. However, the release note also says these items were “not yet available” when updated on May 14, so I would treat them as announced but not broadly shipped yet. (docs.cloud.google.com)
Power BI
- May 2026 update: Power BI added Copilot summary shortcuts on the report ribbon and the visual header, generating report-level or visual-level summaries in the Copilot pane. (learn.microsoft.com)
- May 2026 update: The Copilot narrative visual now supports app-owns-data embedding in preview, extending Copilot-generated narrative output to customer-facing embedded scenarios where end users do not sign in. (learn.microsoft.com)
- May 2026 update: Explore improvements added perspectives for large data models, matrix auto-expand behavior, and toolbar controls to show or hide totals in table and matrix visuals. (learn.microsoft.com)
- May 2026 update: On the BI side, visual calculations and custom totals reached general availability, and report authors also got Set as landing page plus fixed/default column widths for table and matrix visuals. (learn.microsoft.com)
Tableau
- No qualifying Tableau update surfaced in the official release materials I checked for May 11–25, 2026. The latest Tableau Desktop releases I found on the official downloads page are 2026.1.1 and 2025.3.5, both released April 21, 2026, which is outside the requested window. (tableau.com)
Metabase
- May 20, 2026 (Metabase 61): Metabase added AI access controls by feature and by user group for both internal and embedded analytics. (metabase.com)
- May 20, 2026: Metabase added token/message limits at the instance, user-group, and embedded-customer level, plus reset schedules. ([metabase.com](https://www.metabase.com/releases/m...

May 11, 2026 - Looker Conversational GA, Sigma Builder Updates

Mon, 11 May 2026 16:00:00 +0200

Within the Apr 27–May 11, 2026 window, I found confirmed analyst-facing BI/AI feature updates for Looker and Sigma. For the other platforms, the latest public feature notes I could verify were outside the window or not precisely dateable into it. (cloud.google.com)
Looker
- May 7, 2026: In the announced Looker 26.8 update, Conversational Analytics Advanced Analytics moved to general availability. Rollout was scheduled to start May 10, 2026 for Looker (original) and May 11, 2026 for Looker (Google Cloud core). (cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Looker added a preview for Conversational Analytics data agents on user-defined dashboards. (cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Looker added a preview to publish Conversational Analytics data agents to Gemini Enterprise. (cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Dashboard download controls became more configurable: editors can set default row and column limits for tile downloads, and viewers can adjust those values when downloading. (cloud.google.com)
- May 7, 2026: Conversational Analytics gained support for querying Looker Explores in Development Mode. (cloud.google.com)
Power BI
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days that I could verify. The latest public feature summary I found was the April 22, 2026 update, which is outside the requested window. (europe.powerbi.microsoft.com)
Tableau
- No qualifying update I could confirm in the last 14 days. Tableau’s public materials show an April 2026 release, but the feature page does not expose a precise release date; the dated Tableau blog post I found that references that release is April 25, 2026, just outside the window. (tableau.com)
Metabase
- No qualifying updates in the last 14 days that I could verify. The latest public feature release I found was Metabase 60 on April 16, 2026, outside the window. (metabase.com)
Sigma
- May 1, 2026: Sigma updated global search so that, when an organization has configured an AI provider, search uses semantic search. This is the only clearly AI-facing item in the window. (community.sigmacomputing.com)
- May 1, 2026: Several workbook-building elements reached GA: repeated container, single row container, and value list. These are layout/reporting features for record-based views and dynamic detail panes. (community.sigmacomputing.com)
- May 1, 2026: Sigma added dynamic chart axis ranges driven by formulas or controls, autofit columns for tables, and more control over stacked bar chart data labels. (

April 27, 2026 - Power BI, Sigma, and Tableau AI Updates

Tue, 05 May 2026 15:00:00 +0200

In the last 14 days, I found clear qualifying BI/AI feature updates for Power BI, Sigma, and Tableau. For the other platforms, the latest public release material I found was either outside the Apr 13–27, 2026 window or limited to minor fixes that I excluded. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
Looker
- No qualifying updates found in the last 14 days. In Google’s public Looker release notes, the surfaced entries I found were older, with no Apr 13–27, 2026 analyst-facing feature items visible. (docs.cloud.google.com)
Power BI
- Apr 22, 2026: In-report Copilot on Power BI mobile now supports open-ended follow-up chat against the current report, can generate AI-created visuals, includes citations back to report visuals, and adds voice dictation on iPhone/iPad. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Apr 22, 2026: The modern visual defaults preview adds a base-theme switcher for updating or reverting report themes, plus preset canvas sizes for common aspect ratios. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Apr 22, 2026: Card, button slicer, and list slicer visuals now support a fixed-size layout mode, so authors can specify exact pixel dimensions instead of auto-fitting items. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
- Apr 22, 2026: The April modeling preview adds Direct Lake calculated columns/tables and user-context-aware calculated columns for scenarios like data translations. Microsoft says Direct Lake service rollout is still deploying over the next few weeks, so availability may lag the announcement. (powerbi.microsoft.com)
Tableau
- Date note: Tableau’s public materials identify this as the April 2026 release, and Tableau was still promoting that release on Apr 25, 2026; the exact ship date is not shown on the main feature page, so inclusion in the 14-day window is a best-effort inference from Tableau’s own release surfacing. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Tableau Next MCP is generally available, allowing MCP-compatible AI apps to query Tableau data and metadata through Tableau’s analytics engine. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Inspector in Slack is in beta, sending natural-language metric-threshold alerts into Slack DMs and allowing follow-up questions from there. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: Tableau added agent-governance controls in Concierge: semantic-model scoping and page-filter visibility are GA, while Q&A Calibration is beta for testing and tuning agent responses. (tableau.com)
- April 2026 release: The Tableau App for Microsoft 365 is GA for Tableau Cloud and Server, letting users embed dashboard/Pulse snapshots in Word and PowerPoint and refresh them later. Tableau’s March 16 blog described Word/PowerPoint support as public preview, so GA status appears to be new in the April release. (

April 13, 2026 - GoodData, Tableau, and Qlik Update Roundup

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0200

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.

March 30, 2026 - Power BI Task Flows and Modeling Updates

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0200

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

March 17, 2026 - Mid-March BI Product Updates

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:00:00 +0100

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

March 7, 2026

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:00:00 +0100

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))