The exciting live Demo from the World Partner Conference 2013
In July Microsoft announced forthcoming features of Power BI for Office 365, a data analysis tool to complement Excel. The features allow users to “easily search, discover, and access data within and outside your organization and, with just a few clicks, shape and transform data.” Microsoft describes it as a set of cloud-hosting tools designed to allow businesses do it themselves, rather than utilize business intelligence experts.
One of the features users can try in the preview of Power BI is data mining with question-and-answer-type queries. Microsoft says this Q&A feature “interprets the question the user is asking and serves up the correct interactive chart or graph.”
Another addition is the improved Power Map functionality (former known as GeoFlow). Power Map is an Excel add-in that allows you to overlay geographic and temporal data on Bing maps. “Users can also take the interactive tours designed in Power Map to create videos optimized for mobile, tablets/computer, and HD displays” says Microsoft.
The Power Query add-in has also been improved, supporting different merge options for more query flexibility, plus an increased number of available datasets.