Overview

Power BI is a popular "Business Intelligence" tool developed by Microsoft. Microsoft is constantly working on new visuals and feature development for enhancing and improving the Power BI.

They release these visuals or features as the preview of Power BI. Once these features are in stable condition, the company will release it in their next update.

If we want to use these preview visuals, we should follow the below steps.

Step 1

Select File > Options and Settings > Options.

Step 2

It will open various options available in Power BI Desktop. The left side shows a "Global" options blade and the right side shows Preview features. From Left Side, select "Preview Features".

Step 3

Now, the right side shows the list of all available visuals which are going to be released. It may be different as per your current Power BI Desktop version.

Check the checkboxes for a visual which you want to use. Click OK.

Step 4

It will pop up a prompt saying "You have enabled one or more Preview Features that require restarting Microsoft Power BI Desktop. Thease changes will effect after you restart the application."

This means we have to restart our Power BI Desktop. Close your Power BI Desktop using Close button. Open Power BI Desktop again and check.

Step 5

In our example, we have enabled the below two features.

  1. Shape Map Visual.
  2. Custom report theams.
After restarting, these two features are visible in our Power BI Desktop.
Our Preview Features are visible in Power BI Desktop.

Conclusion

This is how we can enable preview features for Power BI Desktop.