Power BI July 2025 Update Delights: Copilot Smarts, New Visuals, and Enterprise Upgrades

The July 2025 Power BI release delivers major enhancements for users seeking more intelligent insights, seamless enterprise workflows, and next-level visual storytelling. This month, Microsoft marks Power BI’s 10th anniversary with updates that bridge AI, cloud, and on-premises reporting needs.

Enhanced Copilot and AI Features

• Smarter Standalone Copilot: Copilot now evaluates the full Power BI report for richer, context-driven answers (not just the data model).

• Custom Search Controls: Admins can limit Copilot’s search to only “prepped for AI” content, ensuring data security and relevance.

• Verified Answers: Human-reviewed, prompt-based responses are shown for common business queries, boosting accuracy for end users.

• Textual Summaries: Copilot provides auto-generated, human-friendly report summaries for subscriptions and exports, improving clarity for busy stakeholders.

Power BI + Microsoft 365 Integration

• Expanded Data Sharing: Power BI now shares richer report and dashboard metadata with Microsoft 365, making analytics easier to find in Office search and M365 Copilot.

• PBIRS Unified Reporting: SQL Server 2025 consolidates all on-premises Reporting Services into Power BI Report Server (PBIRS).

Reporting & Visualization Upgrades

• Organizational Themes (Preview): Admins can centrally manage and enforce branded report themes, with options for Copilot-generated pages.

• Field Parameters (GA): End-users can now dynamically swap fields in matrices while keeping their expanded/collapsed states, enhancing custom analysis.

• Pie & Donut Chart Revamp: More granular slice formatting, transparency, and border controls bring consistency and polish to reports.

• Custom Visuals: New certified visuals include Linear Gauges, Stacked Bar with Line, Shape Map PRO, and evolved Inforiver Analytics+ packs for advanced storytelling.

Modeling & Connectivity

• Direct Lake in Desktop: Create Direct Lake models from OneLake (SQL & mirrored databases) directly in Power BI Desktop for streamlined reporting.

• Snowflake Connector 2.0 (GA): Faster, more secure connections for heavy workloads, automatic phased upgrades through November 2025.

• New Connectors: Native support for Google BigQuery (Entra ID) and user-installed Netezza ODBC, plus PostgreSQL Entra ID authentication.

Mobile and Developer Enhancements

• Mobile App Redesign: Unified recents and favorites carousel, improved navigation for quick data access on the go.

• PBIR File Format Update: Fully source-controllable Power BI .pbir files now work seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines, REST APIs, and Fabric deployment.

How-To Upgrade to Copilot Smarter Search

Limiting Copilot to Trusted Content

1. Go to Power BI Admin Portal > Tenant Settings > Copilot Search.

2. Set ‘Default search scope’ to “Prepped for AI only.”

3. Workspace admins: Use the workspace setting to fine-tune Copilot’s search permissions.

4. Save settings to restrict Copilot-powered answers strictly to vetted content.

Tips:

• Prep your reports for AI by marking them in Power BI as “Ready for Copilot.”

• Curate and verify key business questions to maximize the value of Copilot’s suggested answers.

Power BI July 2025 Feature Highlights

Power BI’s July 2025 update streamlines analytics, enables smarter AI with Copilot, and empowers organizations to deliver consistent, branded, and actionable reports across cloud and on-premises environments1. Make sure your organization is taking advantage of these features for maximum productivity.